Noninvasive Staging of Kidney Dysfunction Enabled by Renal Clearable Luminescent Gold Nanoparticles

摘要

As a “silent killer”, kidney disease is often hardly detected at its early stage but can cause the lethal kidney failure in its late stage. Thus, a preclinical imaging technique that can readily differentiate the stages of kidney dysfunction is highly desired for fundamental understanding of kidney disease progression. Herein, we reported that in vivo fluorescence imaging, enabled by renal clearable near infrared-emitting gold nanoparticles, can noninvasively detect kidney dysfunction, report the dysfunctional stages and even reveal adaptive function in mouse model of unilateral obstructive nephropathy that cannot be diagnosed with routine kidney function markers. These results demonstrated that low-cost florescence kidney functional imaging is highly sensitive for longitudinal, noninvasive monitoring of kidney dysfunction progression in the preclinical research.