Multimodal Image-Guided Surgical and Photodynamic Interventions in Head and Neck Cancer: From Primary Tumor to Metastatic Drainage.

Purpose: The low survival rate of head and neck cancer (HNC) patients is attributable to late disease diagnosis and high recurrence rate. Current HNC staging has inadequate accuracy and low sensitivity for effective diagnosis and treatment management. The multimodal porphyrin lipoprotein-mimicking nanoparticle (PLP), intrinsically capable of positron emission tomography (PET), fluorescence imaging, and photodynamic therapy (PDT), shows great potential to enhance the accuracy of HNC staging and potentially HNC management.

Porphysomes: Multimodal Nanoparticle for Primary Tumor Delineation and Lymphatic Metastasis Mapping in a Head-and-Neck Cancer Rabbit Model (Adv. Healthcare Mater. 14/2015).

On page 2164, J. Chen, J.C.

Multimodal Nanoparticle for Primary Tumor Delineation and Lymphatic Metastasis Mapping in a Head-and-Neck Cancer Rabbit Model.

Cu-porphysome nanoparticles enable superior delineation of neoplastic tissues, metastatic lymph nodes, and vascular drainage on head and neck cancer orthotopic rabbit model using positron emission tomography imaging. Additionally, the nanoparticles exhibit selective fluorescence activation in tumor and metastatic lymph nodes, which permits intraoperative real-time visualization of disease tissues to precisely define surgical margins and prevents collateral damage during surgeries.

An MRI-sensitive, non-photobleachable porphysome photothermal agent.

Photothermal therapy makes use of photothermal sensitizers and laser light to thermally ablate diseased tissues. Porphysome nanoparticles offer a nontoxic alternative to inorganic nanocrystals for the efficient conversion of light into heat. Mn(3+) ions were incorporated directly into the building blocks of our porphysome nanoparticles, thus imparting MRI sensitivity while simultaneously improving photostability and maintaining high photothermal efficiency.

Biologically-targeted detection of primary and micro-metastatic ovarian cancer.

Ovarian cancer is the leading cause of morbidity/mortality from gynecologic malignancy. Early detection of disease is difficult due to the propensity for ovarian cancer to disseminate throughout the peritoneum. Currently, there is no single accurate test to detect primary or recurrent ovarian cancer.

Inherently multimodal nanoparticle-driven tracking and real-time delineation of orthotopic prostate tumors and micrometastases.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men and the second cause of male cancer-related deaths. There are currently three critical needs in prostate cancer imaging to personalize cancer treatment: (1) accurate intraprostatic imaging for multiple foci and extra-capsular extent; (2) monitoring local and systemic treatment response and predicting recurrence; and (3) more sensitive imaging of occult prostate cancer bone metastases. Recently, our lab developed porphysomes, inherently multimodal, all-organic nanoparticles with flexible and robust radiochemistry.

Intrinsically copper-64-labeled organic nanoparticles as radiotracers.

PET friendly: labels for PET imaging are incorporated into completely organic porphysomes by using a fast (30 min), one-pot, high-yielding (>95 %) procedure to produce highly stable (>48 h) radiolabeled nanoparticles that show the highest specific activity ever reported for a (64) Cu-labeled nanoparticle. These (64) Cu-porphysomes can be accurately and noninvasively tracked in vivo.

Porphyrin-lipid stabilized gold nanoparticles for surface enhanced Raman scattering based imaging.

A porphyrin-phospholipid conjugate with quenched fluorescence was utilized to serve as both the Raman dye and a stabilizing, biocompatible surface coating agent on gold nanoparticles. Through simple synthesis and validation with spectroscopy and confocal microscopy, we show that this porphyrin-lipid stabilized AuNP is a novel SERS probe capable of cellular imaging. To date, this is the first use of porphyrin as a Raman reporter molecule for SERS based imaging.