Abstract

With the engineering of nanomaterials, they become dipolar active to near infrared (NIR) light and form valuable contrasts for deep tissue in vivo imaging at a sub-cellular resolution. The involved physical mechanisms include plasmonic resonance, quantum confinement effects, d-band transition, metal-to-semiconductor transition, bandgap alignment, and lifetime quenching. Some materials can even have multiple contrasts for different molecular imaging modalities like positron emission tomography, magnetic resonance imaging, and computed X-ray tomography. Not only serving as contrast agents in optical microscopy, these materials can also sense the physiological parameters of tumor microenvironment and treat the cancer cells by the photothermal or photodynamic effects. The critical parameters to be sensed include insulin level, oxygen level, and energy metabolism. These NIR imaging tools and molecular probes together provide a theragnosis platform for the study of tumor biology. Especially for the heterogeneous cancer environments, trancing few but important clones like cancer stem cells will be very important for the understanding of their niche environment and the design of targeting therapy. In this presentation, we will show the up-to-date strategies and material systems designed for the theragnosis of tumor. The integrated collaboration among different expertise is required.

© 2017 Japan Society of Applied Physics, Optical Society of America