Letter abstract
Nature Nanotechnology 3, 557 - 562 (2008)
Published online: 17 August 2008 | doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.231
Subject Categories: Carbon nanotubes and fullerenes | Surface patterning and imaging
Carbon nanotubes as photoacoustic molecular imaging agents in living mice
Adam De La Zerda1,2, Cristina Zavaleta1, Shay Keren1, Srikant Vaithilingam2, Sunil Bodapati1, Zhuang Liu3, Jelena Levi1, Bryan R. Smith1, Te-Jen Ma2, Omer Oralkan2, Zhen Cheng1, Xiaoyuan Chen1, Hongjie Dai3, Butrus T. Khuri-Yakub2 & Sanjiv S. Gambhir1,4
Abstract
Photoacoustic imaging of living subjects offers higher spatial resolution and allows deeper tissues to be imaged compared with most optical imaging techniques1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. As many diseases do not exhibit a natural photoacoustic contrast, especially in their early stages, it is necessary to administer a photoacoustic contrast agent. A number of contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging have been suggested previously8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, but most were not shown to target a diseased site in living subjects. Here we show that single-walled carbon nanotubes conjugated with cyclic Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) peptides can be used as a contrast agent for photoacoustic imaging of tumours. Intravenous administration of these targeted nanotubes to mice bearing tumours showed eight times greater photoacoustic signal in the tumour than mice injected with non-targeted nanotubes. These results were verified ex vivo using Raman microscopy. Photoacoustic imaging of targeted single-walled carbon nanotubes may contribute to non-invasive cancer imaging and monitoring of nanotherapeutics in living subjects16.
- Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology and Bio-X Program, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
- Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
- Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
- Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California 94305, USA
Correspondence to: Sanjiv S. Gambhir1,4 e-mail: sgambhir@stanford.edu
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