Rare earth nanoprobes for optical imaging and disease tracking (C3i)

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PROJECT SUMMARY / ABSTRACT This project is a C3i Accell administrative supplement to our ongoing R01 project (EB018358 “Rare-earth nanoprobes for optical imaging and disease tracking”). The parent R01 project is developing short-wave infrared (SWIR) light-emitting nanoparticle contrast agents and imaging instrumentation for use in fluorescence-guided surgery. In the R01 project, mouse models of cancer are employed to evaluate the performance of these contrast agents in vivo. Through the core C3i program, we learned that successful commercialization of this technology will require us to demonstrate that contrast agent synthesis can be scaled to much larger volumes than used in our R01 murine studies, while maintaining quality and consistency. We currently synthesize nanoprobes in individual 15 ml batches which are sufficient to complete a typical longitudinal murine experiment, but inadequate for moving the technology forward into large animal models and in-human clinical trials. To enable these future studies, this C3i Accell project will develop and validate methods to synthesize nanoprobes at the 1000 ml scale. Nanoprobes will contain an erbium-doped nanoparticle core providing SWIR optical emissions, encapsulated in human serum albumin for biocompatibility, with the small molecule AMD3100 conjugated to the outer surface for targeting the CXCR4 tumor biomarker. To maintain uniformity in nanoprobe properties at this scale and to demonstrate a scalable approach for commercial production, we will develop synthesis methods using a continuous flow microfluidic platform.