Preclinical in Vitro and in vivo Assessment of a Novel Graphene Based MRI Contrast Agent

Shruti kanakia¹, Jimmy Toussaint¹, Sayan Mullick Chowdhury¹, Tanuf Tembulkar¹, Terry Button², Kenneth Shroyer³, William Moore², Balaji Sitharaman¹

We report pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo small animal studies of a novel graphene-based MRI CA. The formulation called GNP-Dex consists of monodisperse graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs; small disc-shaped graphene nanoparticles with diameter ~40 nm and thickness ~3-4 nm), intercalated with manganese Mn2+ ions, and water-solubilized with dextran. The results show that the GNP-Dex formulation is safe (LD50 > 500 mg/kg). At potential therapeutic doses (≤100 mg/kg), they show no nephrotoxicity and are more efficacious than clinical MRI CAs Magnevist and Ablavar. The results indicate that GNP-Dex show potential for development as high performance clinical T1 MRI CA.