Targeted Photoacoustic Imaging of Brain Tumor Mediated by Neutrophils Engineered with Lipid-Based Molecular Probe
Xingang Liu, Yukun Duan, Dehong Hu, Min Wu, Chengjian Chen, Pramila Ghode, Gayathiri Magarajah, Nitish V. Thakor, Xin Liu, Chengbo Liu, Zonghai Sheng, Hairong Zheng, Bin Liu
Abstract
The delivery of imaging agents to brain tumor sites has been a longstanding hindrance, because of the presence of blood-brain barriers (BBB) and the complex brain tumor microenvironment. The living cell-based delivery system has shown tantalizing prospects for therapeutic applications targeting oncological diseases. Herein, we design a lipid-decorated molecular photoacoustic contrast agent TFML, which can effectively label harvested live neutrophils without affecting the activation and transmigration functions. After labeling neutrophils with TFML probes, TFML-labeled neutrophil (TFML-NE) was adoptively transferred into the recipient body and demonstrated strong PA signals, good brain tumor-targeting capability, and was applied for mice glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) detection. The successful development of TFML probes for neutrophil labeling and brain tumor targeting PAI presents a promising prospect for neutrophil-based nanotherapeutics studies.