Rare-earth-doped biological composites as in vivo shortwave infrared reporters

By D. Naczynski, M. Tan, M. Zevon, Brian Wall, Jesse Kohl, Anthony B. Kulesa, Suzie Chen, C. M. Roth, R. Riman, P. Moghe. Nature Communications, 2013

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The extension of in vivo optical imaging for disease screening and image-guided surgical interventions requires brightly emitting, tissue-specific materials that optically transmit through living tissue and can be imaged with portable systems that display data in real-time. Recent work suggests that a new window across the short-wavelength infrared region can improve in vivo imaging sensitivity over near infrared light. Here we report on the first evidence of multispectral, real-time short-wavelength infrared imaging offering anatomical resolution using brightly emitting rare-earth nanomaterials and demonstrate their applicability toward disease-targeted imaging. Inorganic-protein nanocomposites of rare-earth nanomaterials with human serum albumin facilitated systemic biodistribution of the rare-earth nanomaterials resulting in the increased accumulation and retention in tumour tissue that was visualized by the localized enhancement of infrared signal intensity. Our findings lay the groundwork for a new generation of versatile, biomedical nanomaterials that can advance disease monitoring based on a pioneering infrared imaging technique. The short-wavelength infrared spectral region is of interest for bio-imaging applications as biological tissue is transparent to such light. Here Naczynski et al. fabricate rare-earth-based nanomaterials and demonstrate multispectral, real-time short-wavelength infrared in-vivoimaging.

Subfields: Biomedical Engineering, Radiology, Nuclear Medicine and Imaging

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7422384e6a91830199ab392e8dac4c5d41221609