A "Shake and Use" Theranostic System for Combined Radio-imaging and Photodynamic Therapy

在目前的癌症治疗方案中，肿瘤的成像和治疗干预(手术、化疗、放射治疗)通常分开进行，有时相隔几周。显然，在这段时间内，肿瘤有机会生长和扩散。在这个项目中，我们寻求将成像和治疗结合到一个分子中，允许使用用于成像的同一分子进行干预以抑制肿瘤生长。这种情况下的成像方式是正电子发射断层扫描(PET)，这被认为是识别和分期肿瘤的首选技术。我们将合成的分子的治疗方面使用一种名为光敏剂的化合物，当受到高强度可见光照射时，它会产生剧毒的活性氧物种。这项名为光动力疗法(PDT)的技术已被证明能显著抑制肿瘤生长，并提高对肿瘤组织的免疫反应，因此，尽管PDT不太可能治愈肿瘤，但它可能会在成像和传统治疗之间阻止它生长，还可能招募免疫系统来对抗癌症的扩散。

In current cancer treatment regimes it is common for imaging of the tumour and therapeutic interventions (surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy) to be performed separately, sometimes several weeks apart. Obviously, during this time the tumour has the opportunity to grow and spread. In this project we seek to combine both imaging and therapy into a single molecule, allowing intervention to inhibit tumour growth to be performed using the same molecule used for imaging. The imaging modality in this case is positron emission tomography (PET), which is regarded as the technique of choice for identifying and staging tumours. The therapeutic aspect of the molecules we will synthesise uses a compound known as a photosensitiser, which generates highly toxic reactive oxygen species when irradiated with high intensity visible light. The technique, known as photodynamic therapy (PDT) has been shown to significantly inhibit tumour growth and also raises an immune response against the tumour tissue, thus, although PDT is unlikely to cure the tumour, it may prevent it growing in the period between imaging and conventional therapy, and also may recruit the immune system to combat spread of the cancer.