A Photoacoustic Contrast Agent for miR-21 via NIR Fluorescent Hybridization Chain Reaction.

ABSTRACT: Nucleic acids are well-established biomarkers of cancer with immense value in diagnostics and basic research. However, strategies to monitor these species in tissue can be challenging due to the need for amplification of imaging signal from low analyte concentrations with high specificity. Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is gaining traction for molecular imaging of proteins, small biomolecules, and nucleic acids by coupling pulsed near-infrared (NIR) excitation with broadband acoustic detection. This work introduces a PA nucleic acid contrast agent that harnesses NIR fluorophore and quencher-tagged hybridization chain reaction (HCR) for signal amplification. This HCR probe was designed to enable contact quenching between NIR dye-quencher pairs by coercing their direct alignment when miR-21, a m

SUBMITTER: Borum RM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9122088 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature