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Updated: Mar 2, 2026
Nanosensors to Detect Protease Activity In Vivo for Noninvasive Diagnostics
Published on: July 16, 2018
Mucin-1-Antibody-Conjugated Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles for Selective Breast Cancer Detection in a Mucin-1
Didier Dréau1,2, Laura Jeffords Moore1, Merlis P Alvarez-Berrios3
1Department of Biological Sciences, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Blvd, Charlotte NC 28223, USA.
Abstract:
Mucin-1 (MUC1), a transmembrane glycoprotein is aberrantly expressed on ~90% of breast cancer and is an excellent target for nanoparticulate targeted imaging. In this study, the development of a dye-doped NIR emitting mesoporous silica nanoparticles platform conjugated to tumor-specific MUC1 antibody (ab-tMUC1-NIR-MSN) for in vivo optical detection of breast adenocarcinoma tissue is reported. The structural properties, the in vitro and in vivo performance of this nanoparticle-based probe were evaluated. In vitro studies showed that the MSN-based optical imaging nanoprobe is non-cytotoxic and targets efficiently mammary cancer cells overexpressing human tMUC1 protein. In vivo experiments with female C57BL/6 mice indicated that this platform accumulates mainly in the liver and did not induce short-term toxicity. In addition, we demonstrated that the ab-tMUC1-NIR-MSN nanoprobe specifically detects mammary gland tumors overexpressing human tMUC1 in a human MUC1 transgenic mouse model.
