In situ Activatable Peptide-based Nanoprobes for Tumor Imaging

Owing to its excellent biological properties, peptide has been widely used in the design of nanoprobes capable of enhancing tumor imaging signals. In recent years, a number of peptide-based nanoprobes with strong loading capacity and great biocompatibility have been developed for precision tumor imaging by coupling peptide motifs with different imaging agents. It is worth noting that, compared with "always on" mode, the use of stimulus-mediated in situ activatable mode to design and control the self-assembly or nanostructure transformation of peptide-based nanoprobes in vivo can achieve the significant improvement of imaging efficiency. Herein, we summarize the recent progress of in situ activatable peptide-based nanoprobes for tumor imaging in diverse imaging modes, including magnetic resonance imaging(MRI), fluorescence imaging(FI), photoacoustic imaging(PAI), radionuclide imaging(RI) and multimodal imaging. Finally, we briefly prospect the challenges and potential development directions of this field.