I-Corps: Quantitative Tissue Oxygen Sensors

I-Corps项目更广泛的影响/商业潜力是为各种疾病患者提供个性化治疗和改善结果。组织氧含量偏离正常水平会给患者带来不良后果，从癌症患者对放射治疗产生耐药性，到肢体受损患者截肢。针对这些疾病和其他疾病的临床干预需要一种氧气感应方法，这种方法可以产生可操作的数据，并采用与当前临床护理兼容的格式。例如，在治疗癌症时，了解肿瘤氧的分布和定量水平可以使医生在低氧区域应用更高剂量的辐射，以对抗在这些环境中通常观察到的治疗耐药性。这种氧传感器是一种平台技术，可用于广泛的临床和临床前应用。它克服了过去和当前氧传感替代方案的局限性，并提供了微创、定量和绝对的组织氧测量。I-Corps项目的重点是推进一种新型的氧传感聚合物，该聚合物可以使用磁共振成像（MRI）进行无创测量。该材料用于通过测量分子氧对硅树脂MRI特性的影响来定量氧。核磁共振成像特性是在任何给定时间传感器中氧气浓度的函数。MRI测量值可以通过校准曲线转换为氧值，为医生提供可操作的临床信息。该传感器完全由硅树脂制成，这限制了可能影响测量质量的水和生物材料的进入。硅胶传感器的弹性体特性使其可以定制广泛的临床应用。该传感器通过与临床工作流程兼容的技术和设备提供定量和长期的组织氧跟踪。该传感器已在多个临床前小动物模型中进行了评估，并处于宫颈癌早期可行性临床试验中。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this I-Corps project is to personalize therapies and improve outcomes for patients with a wide range of diseases and ailments. Deviation from normal tissue oxygen levels can cause poor outcomes for patients, ranging from resistance to radiation therapy for cancer patients to amputation for a patient suffering from a crushed limb. Clinical interventions to address these and other diseases require an oxygen sensing method that produces actionable data and is in a format that is compatible with current clinical care. For example, when treating cancer, understanding the distribution and quantitative levels of tumor oxygen could enable physicians to apply higher doses of radiation to the low oxygen regions in order to combat the treatment resistance typically observed in these environments. This oxygen sensor is a platform technology that can be used in a wide range of clinical and pre-clinical applications. It overcomes the limitations of both past and current oxygen sensing alternatives and provides minimally invasive, quantitative, and absolute measurements of tissue oxygen. This I-Corps project focuses on advancing a novel oxygen sensing polymer that is measured non-invasively using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). This material is used to quantify oxygen by measuring the influence of molecular oxygen on the MRI properties of the silicone. The MRI properties are a function of the concentration of oxygen that is in the sensor at any given time. The MRI measurements can be converted to oxygen values using a calibration curve to provide the actionable clinical information to physicians. The sensor is made completely of silicone which limits the ingress of water and biological materials that could compromise measurement quality. The elastomeric nature of the silicone sensor allows it to be customized for a wide range of clinical applications. The sensor offers quantitative and long-term tracking of tissue oxygen with a technique and device that is compatible with the clinical workflow. This sensor has been evaluated in multiple pre-clinical small animal models and is in an early feasibility clinical trial for cervical cancer.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.