Superior Fluorescent Nanoemulsion Illuminates Hepatocellular Carcinoma for Surgical Navigation

Abstract

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the fifth most common cancer worldwide, poses a severe threat to public health. Intraoperative fluorescence imaging provides a golden opportunity for surgeons to visualize tumor-involved margins, thereby implementing precise HCC resection with minimal damage to normal tissues. Here, a novel-acting contrast agent, which facilely bridges indocyanine green (ICG) and lipiodol using self-emulsifying nanotechnology, was developed for optical surgical navigation. Compared to clinically available ICG probe, our prepared nanoemulsion showed obviously red-shifted optical absorption and enhanced fluorescence intensity. Further benefiting from the shielding effect of lipiodol, the fluorescence stability and anti-photobleaching ability of nanoemulsion were highly improved, indicating a great capacity for long-lasting in vivo intraoperative imaging. Under the fluorescence guidance of nanoemulsion, the tumor tissues were clearly delineated with a signal-to-noise ratio above 5-fold, and then underwent a complete surgical resection from orthotopic HCC-bearing mice. Such superior fluorescence performances, ultrahigh tumor-to-liver contrast, as well as great bio-safety, warrants the great translational potential of nanoemulsion in precise HCC imaging and intraoperative navigation.

Recent Advances in Interventional Fluorescence Imaging: Toward the Precise Visualization of Transarterial Mini-Invasive Delivery Systems

“…Based on this, our group prepared a contrast agent with excellent performance through the self-emulsification technology of lipiodol and ICG with Tween-80 for optical surgical navigation of HCC. 46 By comparison, the obtained nanoemulsion had noticeably redshifted absorption and enhanced the fluorescence signal.…”

“…This emulsion was effective at overcoming the diffusion and depth limitations of an ICG solution administered alone and had great potential to facilitate accurate localization and resection of pulmonary nodules during minimally invasive procedures. Based on this, our group prepared a contrast agent with excellent performance through the self-emulsification technology of lipiodol and ICG with Tween-80 for optical surgical navigation of HCC . By comparison, the obtained nanoemulsion had noticeably red-shifted absorption and enhanced the fluorescence signal.…”

“…It is ideal to deliver embolic agents to the target vessel to block the blood and nutrient supply and is thus considered a promising mini-invasive technique. Real-time intraoperative guidance is crucial during surgery operation for complete and safe tumor resection. − Imaging, as one of the attractive topics in modern medical application, has exhibited great potential in the early diagnosis and effective treatment of most diseases including malignant tumors, inflammation, and vascular diseases. − It can be roundly used in diagnosis, target localization, surgical navigation, and assessment responses to post-therapy. Due to the limitations of imaging equipment, imaging probes are generally used to obtain accurate molecular data .…”

Cell membrane-targeting NIR fluorescent probes with large Stokes shifts for ultralong-term transplanted neural stem cell tracking

“…Currently, since optical imaging could perform high space-time resolution, fluorescent probe-based bioimaging has become the most popular real-time biological process imaging technique, which provides varied information for biological research ( Li et al, 2013 ; Jeong et al, 2018 ; Zhao et al, 2018 ; Yang et al, 2020 ; Fang et al, 2021 ; Ghanim et al, 2021 ). Recently, there are some reports about smart nanomaterials which are applied in biosensing and therapy ( Yi et al, 2022 ; Zheng et al, 2022 ; Zhu et al, 2022 ). Conventional fluorescent probes in the visible region always suffer from tissue scattering, autofluorescence, etc., resulting in low tissue penetration depth and spatial resolution.…”

A Superstable Homogeneous Lipiodol-Nanoformulation to Overcome the Dilemma of Interventional Embolization Chemotherapy

“…Recently, He et al reported a superstable homogeneous lipiodol-hydrophilic chemodrug formulation for TACE of HCC ( He et al, 2022 ), which significantly enhanced the dispersion of chemotherapeutic drugs in lipiodol, thereby increasing the drug bioavailability of TACE in HCC patients and overcoming the shortcoming of rapid drug-releasee in clinic. Compared with the conventional surfactant emulsion strategy to increase drug dispersibility ( Zhu et al, 2022 ), this superstable homogeneous intermixed formulation technology (SHIFT) is a green manufacture with any additions ( Chen et al, 2020a ; Cheng et al, 2020 ). And the chemotherapeutic drugs are assembled into nanostructures under the condition of cardon dioxide supercritical fluid.…”