MRI is a kind of excellent non-invasive clinical diagnosis method. However, it is challenge to precisely detect the difference of micro-environment between tumor and normal tissue, especially the tiny difference in temperature, due to the intrinsically poor sensitivity of MRI. Recently, Prof. Xin Zhou’s lab at Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics,CAS,developed a novel detection method fortiny temperature difference in the physiological temperature range, and the experimental achievements have been published as a cover article in a recent issue of the journal of Chemical Communications. (http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/CC/C5CC02587G)
The researchers designed and prepared a micelle MRI contrast agent, which was able to respond to the tiny temperature difference in the physiologicaltemperature range. Using thermosensitive micelle as a platform, a nano contrast agentwith the size of <100 nmwas designed based on chemical exchange transfer exchange (CEST) MRI. The structure and morphologyof the micelle changes around 37 °C, and thus the chemical exchange rate of the bond water in the contrast agent varies, resulting in a obvious change of the CEST effect. Though the CEST MRI, the “smart”enhancements of MRI signal at difference temperatures were achieved. As the responsive temperature is close to human physiologicaltemperature, this contrast agent shows a great potential in the clinical applications.
This research was supported by NSFC .
Body temperature sensitive MRI witha new CEST MRI contrast agent.