cNGR-based synergistic-targeted NIR fluorescent probe for tracing and bioimaging of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

摘要

Identification of fluorescent biomarkers with peptide ligand-directed receptors for diagnosis or theranostic of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is still challenging. As potential prognostic/predictive bioimaging targets, both aminopeptidase N(APN, known as CD13) and Caveolin-1 are found as upregulation on the cell membrane surface of PDAC, in which APN is the principal receptor of the cyclic peptide cNGR (Asn-Gly-Arg, NGR) and Caveolin-1 can synergistically mediate endocytosis in this receptor-targeted process. Herein, we conjugate cNGR to dicyanomethylene-4H-pyran (DCM) chromophore to develop a synergistic-targeted near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probe DCM-cNGR with strongly intrinsic NIR fluorescence, stable optical performance, low cytotoxicity, and rapid accumulation in PANC-1 cells with the synergistic overexpressed APN receptor-targeted and Caveolin-1-mediated endocytosis. As demonstrated, DCM-cNGR can realize noninvasive NIR imaging for targeting PANC-1 tumor in vivo after intravenous injection into PANC-1 xenograft tumor of nude mice, making a great promise to improve the precision diagnosis and therapy of pancreatic cancer with real time tracing and bioimaging of PDAC in vitro and in vivo.