Photoacoustic
imaging (PAI) is a promising noninvasive technique
for molecular and cellular characterization of cancer. Cancer detection
by PAI is an area of active research, and the recent advent of contrast
agents based on near-infrared (NIR)-absorbing dyes or organic/inorganic
nanoparticles tremendously improved the specificity and the signal
contrast. Here we report the photoacoustic (PA) signal enhancement
produced by biodegradable passion fruit-like nanoarchitectures in
phantoms and ex vivo. By this approach, the synergistic interaction
between commercial NIR-fluorophores and ultrasmall metal nanoparticles
is exploited to produce a PA signal enhancement in the biological
window. Moreover, the degradation of the nanoarchitectures is investigated
in physiological environment as reference matrix.
Ref. [82] was not included in the originally published version of this article. It should be added to the second paragraph on page 7179, which then reads as follows: "More recently, the notion to exploit the natural tropism of cells, such as tumor-associated macrophages, [35][36][37][38][39] T cells, [40,82] mesenchymal stem cells, [41][42][43] and neural stem cells, [44,45] has begun to emerge as a radical alternative."Ref.
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