1. Academic Validation
  2. Lighting up metastasis process before formation of secondary tumor by phosphorescence imaging

Lighting up metastasis process before formation of secondary tumor by phosphorescence imaging

  • Sci Adv. 2023 May 19;9(20):eadf6757. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.adf6757.
Kai Chang 1 Leyi Xiao 2 Yuanyuan Fan 1 Juqing Gu 1 Yunsheng Wang 3 Jie Yang 3 Mingzhou Chen 4 Yufeng Zhang 2 Qianqian Li 1 Zhen Li 1 3
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 Hubei Key Lab on Organic and Polymeric Opto-Electronic Materials, TaiKang Center for Life and Medical Sciences, Sauvage Centre for Molecular Sciences, Department of Chemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
  • 2 State Key Laboratory Breeding Base of Basic Science of Stomatology (Hubei-MOST) and Key Laboratory of Oral Biomedicine, Ministry of Education, School and Hospital of Stomatology, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
  • 3 Institute of Molecular Aggregation Science, Tianjin University, Tianjin, China.
  • 4 State Key Laboratory of Virology and Modern Virology Research Centre, Collage of Life Science, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China.
Abstract

Metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths; until now, the detection of tumor metastasis is mainly located at the period that secondary tumors have been formed, which usually results in poor prognosis. Thus, fast and precise positioning of organs, where tumor metastases are likely to occur at its earliest stages, is essential for improving patient outcomes. Here, we demonstrated a phosphorescence imaging method by organic nanoparticles to detect early tumor metastasis progress with microenvironmental changes, putting the detection period ahead to the formation of secondary tumors. In the orthotopic and simulated hematological tumor metastasis models, the microenvironmental changes could be recognized by phosphorescence imaging at day 3, after tumor implantation in liver or intravenous injection of Cancer cells. It was far ahead those of other reported imaging methods with at least 7 days later, providing a sensitive and convenient method to monitor tumor metastases at the early stage.

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