Molecular Beacons for Clinical Cancer Imaging

在医学成像中存在对检测和表征不同疾病过程的日益增长的需求。分子光学成像是一种新的成像方式，它使用穿透光线生成分子图像，并提供了采用荧光标记的报告信标来获得有关特定疾病状态的特定分子信息的可能性。VisEN Medical是开发用于临床癌症成像的新型光学成像验证技术的先驱。这项技术是基于近红外光学探头的疾病。在人体内，探针只有在与它们被设计为靶向的特定酶接触时才被激活或“可成像”，从而导致高特异性和信号放大。我们期望这种分子成像技术对筛选、诊断、表征和优化光学分子探针以用于未来的临床前测试产生重大影响。我们选择使用这种技术靶向组织蛋白酶B，因为已知它与癌症生长和转移的许多关键步骤相关。拟议的商业应用：VisEn Medical计划在两年内开发一种用于人体测试的癌症成像探针。在分子水平上了解癌症等疾病将有助于（1）检测早期疾病-甚至在形态学变化之前，（2）更好地表征不同的疾病状态，以及（3）改进，指导和监测疾病治疗。

There is a growing need in medical imaging to detect and characterize different disease processes. Molecular optical imaging is a new imaging modality that generates molecular images using penetrating light rays and offers the possibility to employ fluorescently-tagged reported beacons to obtain specific molecular information about a particular disease state. VisEN Medical is pioneering the development of a novel optical imaging prove technology for clinical cancer imaging. This technology is based on near-infrared optical probes disease. Inside a human, the probes become activated or "imageable" only when they come in contact with the specific enzymes that they are designed to target, resulting in high specificity and signal amplification. We expect this molecular imaging technology to have a major impact on the screening, diagnosis, characterization characterize and optimize an optical molecular probe for future pre-clinical testing. We have chosen to target the enzyme cathepsin B using this technology, as it is known to be associated with many key steps in cancer growth and metastasis. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS: VisEn Medical plans to develop a cancer imaging probe for human testing within two years. Understanding diseases such as cancer at its molecular level will help to (1) detect early disease-even before morphological changes are present, (2) better characterize different disease states, and (3) improve, guide and monitor disease treatment.