Chinese scholars have made progress in the research of nanocontrast agents specific for early liver cancer imaging diagnosis

Figure Hepatocyte-specificMnFe2O4-EOB-PEG nanocontrast agent development and magnetic resonance hepatobiliary imaging

With the support of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (approval number: 82150301), Professor Fan Haiming's team at Northwest University developed a new, highly sensitive hepatocyte-specific nanocontrast agent, and the research results were based on "A Hepatocyte-targeting Nanoparticle for Enhanced Hepatobiliary Magnetic.
" Resonance Imaging", published online in Nature? Journal
of Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Link to the paper: _istranslated="1">.

Liver cancer, including primary liver cancer and cholangiocarcinoma, is the most common and highly fatal liver malignant tumor
in the world.
Liver cancer is currently the only malignant tumor that can be clinically diagnosed by imaging, and enhanced magnetic resonance hepatobiliary imaging is considered to be the most sensitive imaging diagnostic method
for liver cancer.
However, the currently used hepatocyte-specific contrast agent disodium gadolinated sedate (Gd-EOB-DTPA) has low signal enhancement, insufficient specificity and affinity, which makes it difficult to qualitatively detect small lesions of early liver cancer less than 1 cm, and cannot meet the clinical needs
of early imaging diagnosis of liver cancer.

In view of the above problems, Professor Fan Haiming's team designed a novel hepatocyte-specific quasiparamagnetic ultra-small manganese ferrite nanocontrast agent (MnFe2O4-EOB-PEG)
based on the previous research on medical magnetic nanomaterials.
By efficiently binding to SLC39A14 and OATP1 receptors, the contrast agent specifically targets hepatocytes, and realizes accurate imaging detection of small lesions of early liver cancer (Figure).

The results show that the T1 relaxation efficiencyof the designed MnFe2O4-EOB-PEG nanocontrast agent is 2 times higher than that of clinical Gd-EOB-DTPA, which effectively improves the imaging sensitivity
.
The results of magnetic resonance hepatobiliary imaging inlarge animals showed that the liver contrast of MnFe2O4-EOB-PEG was 5.
8 times higher than that of clinical Gd-EOB-DTPA, and the 0.
5 mm liver duct could be clearly resolved, and the imaging time of liver parenchyma was also compressed from 15 minutes to 5 minutes, which significantly improved the imaging efficiency
.
Liver cancer imaging results showed that MnFe2O4-EOB-PEG had a detection rate of 92% for small liver cancer lesions (< 0.
5 cm).

In addition, the contrast medium can clearly show the location and degree of obstruction on monkey gallbladder obstruction models, which is expected to be used for noninvasive bile duct imaging
.
The preliminarily completed safety evaluation of small animals and large animals showed that MnFe2O4-EOB-PEG had good safety and could be quickly cleared by liver and kidney, and the 7-day residual rate was less than 1%, which had good clinical transformation potential.

This study not only provides a new imaging diagnostic tool for the early detection of liver cancer, but also provides a new strategy
for the design of highly specific imaging contrast agents.