Target tumor hypoxia with 2-nitroimidazole-ICG dye conjugates

摘要

In this paper, we have synthesized a second generation tumor hypoxia targeted 2-nitroimidazole-ICG conjugate using piperazine linker (2-nitro-ICG-p) and validated its performance in in vivo tumor targeting. The results have shown that tumor hypoxia can be targeted with twice higher signal strength beyond three hours post-injection while the un-targeted ICG has completely washed out. The improvement of the second generation 2-nitro-ICG-p dyes is 1.2-1.3 times over the first generation 2-nitro-ICG dyes using ethanol linker beyond 3 hours post-injection which is the optimal time-window for evaluating tumor hypoxia.