Authors: Edward G Walsh David R Mills Sierin Lim Barindra Sana Kate E Brilliant William K C Park
Publish Date: 2013/01/09
Volume: 15, Issue: 1, Pages: 1409-
Abstract
A genetically modified ferritin has been examined for its properties as a tumorselective magnetic resonance imaging MRI contrast agent The engineered ferritin described herein was derived from Archaeoglobus fulgidus AfFtnAA which stores a significantly greater quantity of iron than wildtype ferritins Relaxivity measurements were taken at 3 Tesla of ferritin particles uniformly distributed in an agarose gel to assess relaxivities r 1 and r 2 The r 1 and r 2 values of the uniformly distributed modified ferritin were significantly higher r 1 = 1290 mM−1 s−1 and r 2 = 5740 mM−1 s−1 than values observed for wildtype ferritin eg horse spleen r 1 = 0674 mM−1 s−1 r 2 = 9554 mM−1 s−1 The modified ironenriched ferritin 145 nm diameter was conjugated with a monoclonal antibody 10 nm length against rat Necl5 a cell surface glycoprotein overexpressed by many epithelial cancers In vitro studies showed strong reactivity of the assembled nanoconjugate to transformed Necl5 positive rat prostate epithelial cells Furthermore MRI demonstrated a significant T2 contrast with negligible T1 effect when bound to cells These findings highlight the utility of the modified ferritin construct as a novel MRI contrast agent that can be manipulated to target antigenspecific tissuesResearch reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number P20GM103421 The previous segment of this project was supported by the National Center for Research Resources NCRR under P20 RR 017695 The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health Research support was also provided by a grant from the Brown University/Lifespan Department of Diagnostic Imaging under award number 20103 Lifespan Research Seed Grant 2012 and Academic Research Fund Tier 1 from Singapore Ministry of Education RG33/07
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