酶控自组装多功能纳米粒子用于癌症的早期诊断、治疗及疗效评价

癌症的早期诊断、治疗、疗效评价是人类在对抗癌症过程中三个最重要的环节。核素成像具有灵敏度高的优势，光学成像具有实时、高分辨的优势，因此二者联用可以更准确地早期诊断癌症。目前被研究的用于成像的纳米材料通常都是在体外完成制备，然后注入活体内用于体内显像。除了在制备技术方面的难度外，这些纳米材料在用于体内显像时所碰到的最大的问题是低摄取以及对目标组织或器官的靶向困难。本项目将模拟自然，设计同时具有放射性和荧光的多功能小分子探针/药物，并利用一个新型缩合反应平台，在癌细胞内蛋白水解酶的作用下，引发被细胞摄取的小分子自身的缩合反应，并在细胞内控制性地自组装放射性/荧光纳米粒子用于癌症的早期诊断、治疗以及疗效评价。

Early detection, therapy, and therapeutic evaluation of cancer are the most important three stages for human being to treat cancer. Nuclear imaging has the highest sensitivity while optical imaging has the advantage of real time and high resolution. Therefore, combination of these two imaging modalities will help people more precisely detect cancer at an early stage. Nowadays, nanomaterials for imaging are mostly prepared in vitro before being injected into living subjects for imaging in vivo. Besides the difficulties of their fabrications, those nanomaterials are facing the problems of low uptake and difficult to target the targeting tissues/organs during the imaging in vivo. Inspired by nature and employing a platform of condensation reaction, in this project we design serials multifunctional (radioactive and fluorescent) probes/drugs. Under the action of the proteases in cancer cells, these probes/drugs will condense and self-assemble into multifunctional nanoparticles inside cells. Optical and radioactive properties of the nanoparticles will be used for the early detection, therapy, and therapeutic evaluation of cancer.