PET/NIR-II fluorescence imaging and image-guided surgery of glioblastoma using a folate receptor α-targeted dual-modal nanoprobe

Purpose The surgery of glioblastoma (GBM) requires a maximal resection of the tumor when it is safe and feasible. The infiltrating growth property of the GBM makes it a challenge for neurosurgeons to identify the tumor tissue even with the assistance of the surgical microscope. This highlights the urgent requirement for imaging techniques that can differentiate tumor tissues during surgery in real time. Fluorescence image-guided surgery of GBM has been investigated using several non-specific fluorescent probes that emit light in the visible and the first near-infrared window (NIR-I, 700-900 nm), which limit the detection accuracy because of the non-specific targeting mechanism and spectral characteristics. Targeted NIR-II (1000-1700 nm) fluorescent probes for GBM are thus highly desired. The folate receptor (FR) has been reported to be upregulated in GBM, which renders it to be a promising target for specific tumor imaging. Methods In this study, the folic acid (FA) that can target the FR was conjugated with the clinically approved indocyanine green (ICG) dye and DOTA chelator for radiolabeling with Cu-64 to achieve targeted positron emission tomography (PET) and fluorescence imaging of GBM. Results Surprisingly it was found that the resulted bioconjugate, DOTA-FA-ICG and non-radioactive Cu-nat-DOTA-FA-ICG, were both self-assembled into nanoparticles with NIR-II emission signal. The radiolabeled DOTA-FA-ICG, Cu-64-DOTA-FA-ICG, was found to specifically accumulate in the orthotopic GBM models using in vivo PET, NIR-II, and NIR-I fluorescence imaging. The best time window of fluorescence imaging was demonstrated to be 24 h after DOTA-FA-ICG injection. NIR-II fluorescence image-guided surgery was successfully conducted in the orthotopic GBM models using DOTA-FA-ICG. All the fluorescent tissue was removed and proved to be GBM by the H&E examination. Conclusion Overall, our study demonstrates that the probes, Cu-64-DOTA-FA-ICG and DOTA-FA-ICG, hold promise for preoperative PET examination and intraoperative NIR-II fluorescence image-guided surgery of GBM, respectively.