A nephrotoxicity-free, iron-based contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging of tumors.

A nephrotoxicity-free, iron-based contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging of tumors. Biomaterials. 2020 Jul 15;257:120234 Authors: Xue X, Bo R, Qu H, Jia B, Xiao W, Yuan Y, Vapniarsky N, Lindstrom A, Wu H, Zhang D, Li L, Ricci M, Ma Z, Zhu Z, Lin TY, Louie AY, Li Y Abstract Gadolinium-based contrast agents (GBCAs) are the most widely used T1 contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and have achieved remarkable success in clinical cancer diagnosis. However, GBCAs could cause severe nephrogenic systemic fibrosis to patients with renal insufficiency. Nevertheless, GBCAs are quickly excreted from the kidneys, which shortens their imaging window and prevents long-term monitoring of the disease per injection. Herein, a nephrotoxicity-free T1 MRI contrast agent is developed by coordinating ferric iron into a telodendritic, micellar nanostructure. This new nano-enabled, iron-based contrast agent (nIBCA) not only can reduce the renal accumulation and relieve the kidney burden, but also exhibit a significantly higher tumor to noise ratio (TNR) for cancer diagnosis. In comparison with Magnevist (a clinical-used GBCA), Magnevist induces obvious nephrotoxicity while nIBCA does not, indicating that such a novel contrast agent may be applicable to renally compromised patients requiring a contrast-enhanced MRI. The nIBCA could precisely image subcutaneous brain tumors in a mouse model and the effective imaging window lasted for at ...
Source: Biomaterials - Category: Materials Science Authors: Tags: Biomaterials Source Type: research