Valeria Righi1,2, Aristarchos Papagiannaros1,2,
Jianxin He3, George Dai2, Laurence Rahme3,
Vitaliano Tugnoli4, Philip K Liu2, Ronald G. Tompkins5,
Bruce R. Rosen2, Aria A. Tzika1,2
1Department of Surgery, NMR
Surgical Laboratory, MGH & Shriners Burn Institute, Harvard Medical
School, Boston, MA, United States; 2Department of Radiology,
Athinoula A. Martinos Center of Biomedical Imaging, Boston, MA, United
States; 3Department of Surgery, Molecular Surgery Laboratory, MGH
& Shriners Burn Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United
States; 4Departement of Biochemistry, University of Bologna,
Bologna, Italy; 5Department of Surgery, MGH & Shriners Burn
Institute, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
Our aim was to produce a superior contrast agent that will be administered using systemic as opposed to local administration, which will target and accumulate to the burn site. Specifically, we developed and delivered pegylated lipid coated MR probe with ultra-small super-paramagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (USPION) coated with polymer modified fusogenic lipids and covalently linked to a phosphorothioate-modified oligodeoxynucleotide complementary to c-fos mRNA and imaged mice subjected leg burn. Our study demonstrates the feasibility to monitor burn injury using MR imaging of c-fos transcription in vivo, in a clinically relevant mouse model of burn trauma for the first time.
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