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Updated: Mar 25, 2026

Computed Tomography-guided Time-domain Diffuse Fluorescence Tomography in Small Animals for Localization of Cancer Biomarkers
Published on: July 17, 2012
Fluorescent supramolecular micelles for imaging-guided cancer therapy
Mengmeng Sun1, Wenyan Yin2, Xinghua Dong2
1State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering, Beijing Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, 100029, Beijing, China. yinmz@mail.buct.edu.cn.
Abstract:
A novel smart fluorescent drug delivery system composed of a perylene diimide (PDI) core and block copolymer poly(d,l-lactide)-b-poly(ethyl ethylene phosphate) is developed and named as PDI-star-(PLA-b-PEEP)8. The biodegradable PDI-star-(PLA-b-PEEP)8 is a unimolecular micelle and can self-assemble into supramolecular micelles, called as fluorescent supramolecular micelles (FSMs), in aqueous media. An insoluble drug camptothecin (CPT) can be effectively loaded into the FSMs and exhibits pH-responsive release. Moreover, the FSMs with good biocompatibility can also be employed as a remarkable fluorescent probe for cell labelling because the maximum emission of PDI is beneficial for bio-imaging. The flow cytometry and confocal laser scanning microscopy analysis demonstrate that the micelles are easily endocytosed by cancer cells. In vitro and in vivo tumor growth-inhibitory studies reveal a better therapeutic effect of FSMs after CPT encapsulation when compared with the free CPT drug. The multifunctional FSM nanomedicine platform as a nanovehicle has great potential for fluorescence imaging-guided cancer therapy.

