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Updated: Dec 20, 2025
Multispectral Real-time Fluorescence Imaging for Intraoperative Detection of the Sentinel Lymph Node in Gynecologic Oncology
Published on: October 20, 2010
A fluorescently labelled sialic acid for high performance intraoperative tumor detection
Xuanjun Wu1, Yunpeng Tian, Mingzhu Yu
1Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, The Key Laboratory for Chemical Biology of Fujian Province, The MOE Key Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis & Instrumentation, and Innovation Center for Cell Biology, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China. shoufa@xmu.edu.cn.
Abstract:
Surgical resection is widely used for tumor treatment, necessitating approaches for the precise locating of elusive tumor foci. We report the high performance detection of tumors in mice with fluorescein-isothiocyanate (FITC) labelled sialic acid (FITC-SA), a fluorescent monosaccharide with low cytoxicity. Analysis of mice intravenously injected with FITC-SA revealed high target-to-background fluorescence ratios in subcutaneous tumors and liver tumor implants with 0.2-5 mm diameters, which are significantly below the clinical threshold of minimal residual cancer (∼1 cm clearance). Extracellular FITC-SA is quickly cleared from circulation whereas the intracellular FITC-SA could be metabolically incorporated into glycoproteins via a cellular sialylation pathway. Compared with FITC-SA-laden nanoparticles, free FITC-SA is preferentially and quickly taken up by tumors in mice and displays high tumor-to-background signal contrast, suggesting the potential for fluorescence directed surgical ablation of tumors.
