Key Laboratory of Biomass Chemical Engineering of Ministry of Education, Center for Bionanoengineering, and College of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310027, China.
Department of Radiology, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital (SRRSH) of School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 310027, China.
Nano Lett. 2021 Mar 10;21(5):2199-2206. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.0c04967. Epub 2021 Feb 18.
Liver metastasis (LM) occurs in various cancers, and its early and accurate diagnosis is of great importance. However, the detection of small LMs is still a great challenge because of the subtle differences between normal liver tissue and small metastases. Herein, we prepare glutathione (GSH)-responsive hyaluronic acid-coated iron oxide nanoparticles (HIONPs) for highly sensitive diagnosis of LMs through a facile one-pot method. HIONPs greatly enhance the signal of MRI in tumor metastases as contrast agent (CA), whereas they substantially decrease the signal of liver as CA as they aggregate into clusters upon the high GSH in liver. Consequently, MRI contrasted by HIONPs clearly distinguishes metastatic tumors (bright) from surrounding liver tissues (dark). HIONPs with superior LM contrasting capability and facile synthesis are very promising for clinical translation and indicate a new strategy to develop an ultrasensitive MRI CA for LM diagnosis that exploits high GSH level in the liver.
肝转移（LM）发生于各种癌症，其早期和准确诊断具有重要意义。然而，由于正常肝组织与小转移灶之间的细微差异，小 LM 的检测仍然是一个巨大的挑战。在此，我们通过简便的一锅法制备了谷胱甘肽（GSH）响应性透明质酸包覆的氧化铁纳米颗粒（HIONPs），以通过高灵敏度诊断 LM。作为对比剂（CA），HIONPs 极大地增强了肿瘤转移部位的 MRI 信号，而当它们在肝中高 GSH 作用下聚集成群时，它们会显著降低肝的信号。因此，由 HIONPs 对比增强的 MRI 可以清晰地区分转移性肿瘤（亮）和周围肝组织（暗）。具有优异的 LM 对比能力和简便合成的 HIONPs 非常有希望用于临床转化，并为利用肝中高 GSH 水平开发用于 LM 诊断的超高灵敏度 MRI CA 提供了一种新策略。
