An Activatable Polymeric Nanoprobe for Fluorescence and Photoacoustic Imaging of Tumor-Associated Neutrophils in Cancer Immunotherapy

Yan Zhang*, Shasha He, Cheng Xu, Yue Jiang, Qingqing Miao, Kanyi Pu*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

61 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

Imaging to evaluate tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) is imperative for cancer immunotherapy but remains challenging. We herein report an activatable semiconducting polymer nanoprobe (SPCy) for near-infrared fluorescence (NIRF) and photoacoustic (PA) imaging of neutrophil elastase (NE), a biomarker of TANs. SPCy comprises a semiconducting polymer conjugated with a hemicyanine (hemi-Cy) dye caged by a NE-cleavable peptide as the side chain. After systemic administration, SPCy passively targets the tumor and reacts with NE to “uncage” the hemi-Cy, leading to enhanced NIRF and PA signals of the hemi-Cy but unchanged signals of the SP. Such NE-activated ratiometric NIRF and enhanced PA signals of SPCy correlate with the intratumoral population of TANs. Thus, this study not only presents the first TAN-specific PA probe, but also provides a general molecular design strategy for PA imaging of other immune-related biomarkers to facilitate screening of cancer immunotherapeutics.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere202203184
JournalAngewandte Chemie - International Edition
Volume61
Issue number27
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jul 4 2022
Externally publishedYes

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 Wiley-VCH GmbH.

ASJC Scopus Subject Areas

  • Catalysis
  • General Chemistry

Keywords

  • Activatable Probe
  • Cancer Immunotherapy
  • Fluorescence Imaging
  • Photoacoustic Imaging
  • Tumor-Associated Neutrophils

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