Peng Huan, Vexler Shelby, Xu Shili, Chen Irene A
Cellular Signaling Laboratory, International Research Center for Sensory Biology and Technology of MOST, Key Laboratory of Molecular Biophysics of MOE, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 430074 Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California 90095, United States.
ACS Biomater Sci Eng. 2025 Jun 9;11(6):3297-3306. doi: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.4c02190. Epub 2025 May 8.
Real-time imaging of bacterial infections is an important goal to aid the study and treatment of bacterial infections. Phages can be genetically engineered to ensure a particular biomolecular target specificity, and gold nanomaterials can be conjugated to phages for a variety of applications including biosensing. In this paper, we describe methods to use phage-gold nanorod conjugates for detection and imaging of the bacterial species in mice. The imaging modalities are computed tomography (CT), using gold as a contrast agent, and fluorescence, which can be applied when the FDA-approved near-infrared (NIR) dye indocyanine green (ICG) is also chemically cross-linked to the bioconjugates. In addition, rapid protocols for validating bioconjugate synthesis and the initial assessment of toxicity are given. In this example, the phage-gold nanorod probe is shown to specifically highlight without cross-reactivity to another Gram-negative organism () and appears to be biocompatible. Phage-directed imaging probes may thus be useful for the characterization and diagnosis of bacterial infections.
细菌感染的实时成像对于辅助细菌感染的研究和治疗而言是一个重要目标。噬菌体可以进行基因工程改造以确保特定的生物分子靶标特异性，并且金纳米材料可以与噬菌体缀合以用于包括生物传感在内的各种应用。在本文中，我们描述了使用噬菌体 - 金纳米棒缀合物在小鼠体内检测和成像细菌种类的方法。成像方式包括以金作为造影剂的计算机断层扫描（CT）以及荧光成像，当FDA批准的近红外（NIR）染料吲哚菁绿（ICG）也化学交联到生物缀合物上时即可应用荧光成像。此外，还给出了用于验证生物缀合物合成以及毒性初步评估的快速方案。在这个例子中，噬菌体 - 金纳米棒探针显示出能特异性突出显示，对另一种革兰氏阴性菌（）无交叉反应，并且似乎具有生物相容性。因此，噬菌体导向的成像探针可能对细菌感染的表征和诊断有用。
