Lighting the way to cancer diagnosis
Luminescence is the term used to describe the emission of light by a substance. It constitutes an attractive strategy for the detection of cancer cells as it can offer high sensitivity. The chemistry of imaging agents directly controls the sensitivity, selectivity and overall performance of luminescence in terms of detection in living biological systems. Unlike other systems, luminescence permits the monitoring of biological events in whole organisms, blood and urine samples using inexpensive equipment. Lanthanide luminescence offers several advantages over various organic molecules including discrimination from native fluorescence, longer lifetime and resistance to photobleaching. The main idea behind the EU-funded DENDRIMAGE (Luminescent lanthanide dendrimer imaging agents for detection of cancer cells and tumors in vivo) proposal was to create new dendrimer lanthanide-based luminescent imaging agents. Scientists followed different routes and approaches for obtaining reagents of novel chemistry. They created molecules functionalised with integrin-targeting RGD peptides capable of localising at specific sites within biological systems. In addition, they synthesised dendrimer-based complexes containing a high number of chromophore units. The consortium evaluated the spectroscopic properties and performance of these lanthanide agents in vivo in small animal models. They demonstrated for the first time that lanthanide systems work as non-invasive biological imaging agents and their use can extend to various bioanalytical applications. Considering the low-cost of the luminescence imaging technique and the portable nature of the associated equipment, lanthanide-based imaging agents exhibit high commercial potential. Overall, the results of this project should enable selective and sensitive detection of different types of cancerous tumours at early stages in real-time.
Keywords
Cancer, diagnosis, optical imaging, luminescence, lanthanide, dendrimer, chromophore
