Discipline: Chemistry & Chemical Sciences
Subcategory: STEM Research
Yongfeng Zhao - Jackson State University
Co-Author(s): Devin M. Guillory , Jackson State University; Pohlee Cheah , Jackson State University; Abhishek Sethi , Washington University in St Louis; Gyu Seong Heo , Washington University in St Louis; Yongjian Liu , Washington University in St Louis
Imaging guided therapy integrates imaging tools with therapy to provide substantial benefit for treatment of disease such as cancer. Imaging can evaluate disease before therapy and monitor the prognosis of the treatment. Under the guidance of the imaging information, therapeutical strategies will be optimized. The toxicity of the therapy will be further reduced. Imaging guided therapy can improve the efficacy and reduce side effect. Photothermal therapy is a new noninvasive treatment technique, which employs light absorbers to convert light energy into heat. In the past two decades, intensive studies have been done to develop nanoparticles for photothermal effect. The majority of these materials are inorganic nanomaterials. These effective systems include gold nanorods, gold nonoshells, gold nanocage, gold tripods, graphene oxide, and CuS nanoparticles. Although they have been demonstrated to be very efficient in various animal studies, the problem is that they are usually not biodegradable. They tend to remain in the body for a long period of time and cannot be excreted from biological systems. This situation raises the concerns of potential long term toxicity which hampers future application. In the search for biocompatible platform with photothermal properties, melanin-like nanoparticles have caught great interests. Melanin-like nanoparticles have been used as photothermal agents because they can efficiently convert light energy to heat. Among different imaging modalities, positron emission tomography (PET) has emerged as one of the most frequently used techniques for early stage diagnosis and staging of cancer and other diseases. PET uses positron emitting radiotracers to attain an image. The advantage is very high sensitivity (up to 10-12 mol/L). PET is non-invasive, highly sensitive nature, and high patient compliance. In this study, biodegradable melanin-like nanoparticles with different sizes were prepared and studied for PET imaging guided photothermal therapy for the first time to the best of our knowledge. The nanoparticles were PEGylated to improve the stability. Then the nanpartices were chelated with copper ion and showed highly colloidal stability. In vitro photothermal study show that the particles have high photo-heat conversion effect.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. HRD-1700390.
Faculty Advisor: None Listed,