A Biomagnetic Sensor for Detecting Breast Cancer

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请的主要目的是建立一种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性病变）的新方法。早期发现对于识别病变至关重要，而当治愈率接近100%时，病变仍然被包含。现有的乳房X线摄影术通常在发生显著生长之前不能识别病变。由于这个问题的重要性，人们正在研究替代方法，包括MRI、超声、造影和其他方法。在这里，我们提出了一种新的方法，使用生物磁传感器和有针对性的超顺磁性纳米粒子。传感器将检测并成像体内病变，这些颗粒在注射到受试者体内后通过抗体或血管生成剂结合到这些病变。我们已经在该计划的第一阶段证明，超导量子干涉器件（SQUID）能够检测这些纳米颗粒的亚纳克。这种方法在纳米颗粒选择的灵活性方面优于现有的乳房X线摄影术，以通过靶向癌症类型如HER-2的抗体和靶向肿瘤微血管结构的血管生成剂来增加特异性。纳米颗粒也将用于转移的前哨细胞成像。我们将使用体模和组织制备来表征纳米颗粒的灵敏度和成像能力，并通过动物研究来验证该方法。我们将通过在动物研究中使用这些纳米颗粒作为MRI研究中的造影剂进一步确认成像准确性。我们预计，通过磁传感器检测病变将提供比乳房X线照片更低的假阳性率，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.