A Biomagnetic Sensor for Detecting Breast Cancer

描述(由申请人提供)：本申请的主要目标是建立一种新的方法，用于在乳房成像中早期检测异常病变，无论是癌前病变还是癌症。在治愈率接近100%的情况下，当病变仍被控制时，早期发现对于识别病变至关重要。现有的乳房X光检查通常直到出现显著增长才能发现病变。由于这一问题的重要性，人们对替代方法进行了研究，包括核磁共振、超声波、闪烁成像和其他方法。在这里，我们提出了一种新的方法，使用生物磁性传感器和靶向超顺磁性纳米颗粒。该传感器将检测和成像体内的病变，这些颗粒在注射到受试者体内后被抗体或血管生成剂结合在一起。我们已经在这个项目的第一阶段演示了超导量子干涉设备(SQUID)能够检测到这些纳米颗粒的亚纳米克。这种方法比现有的乳房X光检查方法更具优势，因为纳米粒子选择的灵活性通过针对HER-2等癌症类型的抗体和针对肿瘤微血管结构的血管生成剂来增加特异性。纳米粒子也将被用来对前哨细胞的转移进行成像。我们将使用模体和组织制剂来表征纳米颗粒的敏感性和成像能力，并通过动物实验来验证这一方法。我们将通过使用这些纳米粒子作为造影剂，在我们的动物实验中进行核磁共振研究，进一步确认成像的准确性。我们预计，通过磁性传感器检测病变将提供比乳房X光检查更低的假阳性率，更重要的是，更高的真阳性率。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The principal objective of this application is to establish a new methodology for the early detection of abnormal lesions, whether pre-cancerous or cancerous, in breast imaging. Early detection is crucial to identifying lesions while they are still contained when the cure rate is near 100%. Existing mammography often does not identify lesions until significant growth has occurred. Because of the importance of the problem, there is research in alternative methods, including MRI, ultrasound, scintigraphy, and other methods. We propose here, a novel approach using biomagnetic sensors and targeted superparamagnetic nanoparticles. The sensor will detect and image lesions in-vivo to which these particles have bound by antibodies or angiogenesis agents after injection into the subject. We have demonstrated in Phase I of this program, that Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices (SQUID) are capable of detecting sub- nanograms of these nanoparticles. This methodology has advantages over existing mammography in the flexibility of nanoparticle choices to increase specificity through antibodies targeting cancer types such as HER-2, and angiogenesis agents targeting tumor microvascular structure. Nanoparticles will also be used to image sentinel cells for metastases. We will use phantoms and tissue preparations to characterize nanoparticles for sensitivity and image capabilities and animal studies to verify the methodology. We will further affirm imaging accuracy through the use of these nanoparticles as contrast agents in MRI studies in our animal studies. We anticipate that the detection of lesions by magnetic sensors will provide a lower false positive rate than mammograms and, more importantly, a higher true positive rate.