Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems, State Key Laboratory of Magnetic Resonance and Atomic and Molecular Physics, National Center for Magnetic Resonance in Wuhan, Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, Innovation Academy for Precision Measurement Science and Technology, Wuhan 430071, China.
University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
Anal Chem. 2024 Jun 25;96(25):10152-10160. doi: 10.1021/acs.analchem.3c05573. Epub 2024 May 31.
Assessing the effectiveness of nanomedicines involves evaluating the drug content at the target site. Currently, most research focuses on monitoring the signal responses from loaded drugs, neglecting the changes caused by the nanohosts. Here, we propose a strategy to quantitatively evaluate the content of loaded drugs by detecting the signal variations resulting from the alterations in the microenvironment of the nanohosts. Specifically, hyperpolarized (HP) Xe atoms are employed as probes to sense the nanohosts' environment and generate a specific magnetic resonance (MR) signal that indicates their accessibility. The introduction of drugs reduces the available space in the nanohosts, leading to a crowded microenvironment that hinders the access of the Xe atoms. By employing Xe atoms as a signal source to detect the alterations in the microenvironment, we constructed a three-dimensional (3D) map that indicated the concentration of the nanohosts and established a linear relationship to quantitatively measure the drug content within the nanohosts based on the corresponding MR signals. Using the developed strategy, we successfully quantified the uptake of the nanohosts and drugs in living cells through HP Xe MR imaging. Overall, the proposed HP Xe atom-sensing approach can be used to monitor alterations in the microenvironment of nanohosts induced by loaded drugs and provides a new perspective for the quantitative evaluation of drug presence in various nanomedicines.
评估纳米药物的疗效需要评估药物在靶部位的含量。目前，大多数研究都集中在监测负载药物的信号响应上，而忽略了纳米载体本身的变化。在这里，我们提出了一种通过检测纳米载体微环境变化引起的信号变化来定量评估负载药物含量的策略。具体来说，我们使用超极化（HP）氙气原子作为探针来感知纳米载体的环境，并产生一种特定的磁共振（MR）信号，表明其可及性。药物的引入减少了纳米载体中可用的空间，导致拥挤的微环境阻碍了氙气原子的进入。通过将氙气原子用作信号源来检测微环境的变化，我们构建了一个三维（3D）地图，该地图指示了纳米载体的浓度，并根据相应的 MR 信号建立了一个线性关系，用于定量测量纳米载体中药物的含量。使用所开发的策略，我们通过 HP Xe MR 成像成功地量化了活细胞中纳米载体和药物的摄取量。总之，所提出的 HP 氙气原子感应方法可用于监测负载药物引起的纳米载体微环境变化，并为各种纳米药物中药物存在的定量评估提供了新的视角。
