| Institution: | 1. State Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, School for Radiological and Interdisciplinary Sciences (RAD-X), Collaborative Innovation Center of Radiation Medicine of, Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123 China
These authors contributed equally to this work.;2. School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 637457 Singapore;3. State Key Laboratory of Radiation Medicine and Protection, School for Radiological and Interdisciplinary Sciences (RAD-X), Collaborative Innovation Center of Radiation Medicine of, Jiangsu Higher Education Institutions, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215123 China;4. National Engineering Research Centre for Nanomedicine, College of Life Science and Technology, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, 1037 Luoyu Road, Wuhan, 430074 China |
| Abstract: | Discriminative detection of invasive and noninvasive breast cancers is crucial for their effective treatment and prognosis. However, activatable probes able to do so in vivo are rare. Herein, we report an activatable polymeric reporter (P-Dex) that specifically turns on near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent and photoacoustic (PA) signals in response to the urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) overexpressed in invasive breast cancer. P-Dex has a renal-clearable dextran backbone that is linked with a NIR dye caged with an uPA-cleavable peptide substrate. Such a molecular design allows P-Dex to passively target tumors, activate NIR fluorescence and PA signals to effectively distinguish invasive MDA-MB-231 breast cancer from noninvasive MCF-7 breast cancer, and ultimately undergo renal clearance to minimize the toxicity potential. Thus, this polymeric reporter holds great promise for the early detection of malignant breast cancer. |
