Nano-Biotechnology is coming more important in a medical application. Nanomicro-bubble could have a significant role in this field, like delivery system of drug, enzymes gene and so on. Micro-bubble is utilized as a contrast agent for ultrasound imaging and there are many commercial agents like Levovist, Sonovue, Optison, Sonazoid and so forth. Nano-bubbles can be also used for such contrast ag...

cell based therapeutics is one of the most rapidly advancing medical fields, bringing together a range of fields including transplantation, tissue engineering and regeneration, biomaterials and stem cell biology. however, traditional cell-based therapeutics have many limitations, one of which is their harmful effects exhibited on healthy body cells due to their lack of specificity. nanomedicine...

PURPOSE The purpose of this study was to establish a method for ultrasound (US) contrast agent synthesis and to evaluate the characteristics of the synthesized US contrast agent. METHODS A US contrast agent, composed of liposome and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), was synthesized by dissolving 21 μmol 1,2-dihexadecanoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine (DPPC, C40H80NO8P), 9 μmol cholesterol, and 1.9 μm...

Contrast-enhanced ultrasound imaging has shown promise in the field of molecular imaging. This technique relies upon the adhesion of ultrasound contrast agent (UCA) to targeted molecular markers of disease. This is accomplished by coating the surface of the contrast agent with a ligand that specifically binds to the intended molecular marker. Most UCA particles remain in the blood space, and th...

Diagnostic ultrasound (US) is safer, quicker and cheaper than other diagnostic imaging modalities. Over the past two decades, the applications of US imaging has been widened due to the development of injectable, compressible and encapsulated microbubbles (MBs) that provide an opportunity to improve conventional echocardiographic imaging, blood flow assessment and molecular imaging. The encapsul...

We have developed and tested a liposomal nanocomplex system, which contains Gd-DTPA as a payload and transferrin on the surface, as a tumor specific targeting MRI contrast agent for studying prostate cancer tumors in mice. In vivo, the probe significantly enhanced the MRI signal. The image contrast between the peripheral region of the tumor and the non-involved muscle was nearly 50% higher two ...

Polymer nano-particles (PNPs) with a near-infrared (NIR) light absorption were prepared by the nano-emulsion method to develop contrast agents for photo-acoustic (PA) imaging. The PNP containing silicon naphthalocyanine showed a high absorption coefficient up to 10(10) M(-1) cm(-1). This is comparable to plasmonic gold nano-particles, which have been studied as PA contrast agents. For the PNP l...

Although paraCEST is a method with immense scope for generating image contrast in MRI, it suffers from the serious drawback of high detection limits. For a typical discrete paraCEST agent the detection limit is roughly an order of magnitude higher than that of a clinically used relaxation agent. One solution to this problem may be the incorporation of a large payload of paraCEST agents into a s...

Molecular imaging has become an indispensable technology in cancer research and clinical use. Among various molecular imaging modalities, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) provides high spatial resolution and soft-tissue contrast in global view and optical microscopy supplies excellent time and spatial resolution in local view [1-3]. In the previous study, nano-sized Fe3O4 particles showed signi...

In this review article, we describe the different nano-platforms developed in our laboratory at Northeastern University in Boston, MA for the targeted delivery of drugs and genes. Special emphasis is placed on nano-platforms that offer opportunities for multi-functionalization to allow for targeted stimuli-responsive and/or simultaneous strategic delivery of multiple drugs, genes, as well as th...