Early diagnosis of tumours is important for cancer treatment as a five-year relative survival rates differ substantially between cancer patients treated at early and later stages. Cathepsin B (CTSB) is considered a possible biomarker for early cancer diagnosis due to its enhanced expression in the initial stage of many cancer types. As a result, efficient and precise CTSB activity monitoring offers a way out.
In a recent study published in Angewandte Chemie International Edition, a research team led by Prof. LIANG Gaolin and Prof. YUAN Yue from the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) realised specific photoacoustic (PA) imaging of CTSB-overexpressing tumours through CTSB-initiated intracellular self-assembly of small-molecule PA imaging probes into nanoparticles.
Because of its high tissue-penetrating depth and high spatial resolution, PA imaging is a novel type of non-invasive and non-ionizing biomedical imaging approach with a lot of potential in biomedical research and disease detection. The study’s findings suggest that more ‘smart’ PA probes could be developed for more precise tumour identification.
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