Real-time intravital imaging of RGD-quantum dot binding to luminal endothelium in mouse tumor neovasculature.

ABSTRACT: Nanoscale materials have increasingly become subject to intense investigation for use in cancer diagnosis and therapy. However, there is a fundamental dearth in cellular-level understanding of how nanoparticles interact within the tumor environment in living subjects. Adopting quantum dots (qdots) for their excellent brightness, photostability, monodispersity, and fluorescent yield, we link arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) peptides to target qdots specifically to newly formed/forming blood vessels expressing alpha vbeta 3 integrins. Using this model nanoparticle system, we exploit intravital microscopy with subcellular ( approximately 0.5 microm) resolution to directly observe and record, for the first time, the binding of nanoparticle conjugates to tumor blood vessels in living subjec

SUBMITTER: Smith BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4161135 | biostudies-literature | 2008 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature