Brain Tumors Research Today is a free monthly online journal that collates and summarizes the latest research about Brain Tumors, including details on symptoms, benign and malignant tumors, gliomas, screening, treatment.

Optical and MRI multifunctional nanoprobe for targeting gliomas.

Veiseh O, Sun C, Gunn J, Kohler N, Gabikian P, Lee D, Bhattarai N, Ellenbogen R, Sze R, Hallahan A, Olson J, Zhang M

Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA.

A multifunctional nanoprobe capable of targeting glioma cells, detectable by both magnetic resonance imaging and fluorescence microscopy, was developed. The nanoprobe was synthesized by coating iron oxide nanoparticles with covalently bound bifunctional poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) polymer, which were subsequently functionalized with chlorotoxin and the near-infrared fluorescing molecule Cy5.5. Both MR imaging and fluorescence microscopy showed significant preferential uptake of the nanoparticle conjugates by glioma cells. Such a nanoprobe could potentially be used to image resections of glioma brain tumors in real time and to correlate preoperative diagnostic images with intraoperative pathology at cellular-level resolution.

Published 9 June 2005 in Nano Lett, 5(6): 1003-8.
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