European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging: Using folate receptors α targeting bimodal nanoprobes against glial masterbatches

Glioblastoma Multiforme (GBM) is one of
the most common and deadly brain tumors.
Currently, the most commonly used treatment for gliomas is surgical resection, supplemented by postoperative radiotherapy and chemotherapy
.
However, the infiltrative growth nature of GBM makes it difficult for neurosurgeons to accurately identify tumor margins for maximum resection
.
Folate receptor (FR) has been reported to be highly expressed in GBM, making it a promising target for GBM imaging
.

In view of the problem of precise excision of GBM, researchers from the Key Laboratory of Molecular Imaging of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have designed positron emission tomography (PET) and NIR-II fluorescence dual-modal probes targeting FR to achieve highly sensitive and accurate imaging
of GBM 。 The study, published in the European journal of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, is "PET/NIR-II fluorescence imaging and image-guided surgery of glioblastoma using a folate receptor α-targeted.
" dual-modal nanoprobe”
。

For the GBM-specific target FR, the research team combined folic acid (FA) with the clinically approved dye indocyanine green (ICG) and DOTA chelating agent, and introduced 64Cu radioactive element labeling, and finally constructed a dual-modal probe for PET and optics
.
The results show that the 64Cu-DOTA-FA-ICG probe has high temporal and spatial resolution, high stability and low background signal, making the GBM boundary clearly visible, which can perform preoperative GBM tumor detection and intraoperative residual lesion identification
.
The novel design of this research probe provides new enlightenment
for the accurate diagnosis and surgical navigation of GBM.