Control of the optical Absorption Properties of nanovectors for PHOTOACoustic imaging – CAP-PhotoAc

Drug nanovectors (NVs) are expected to profoundly change therapeutic treatments in highly prevalent diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. However, NV accumulation can be heterogeneous and a patient selection, based on imaging of NV fine localization, could improve treatment efficacy. The CAP-PHOTOAC project aims to develop clinically relevant NVs tagged with organic contrast agents for photoacoustic imaging (PAI) to elucidate intratissue distribution. PAI is an emerging imaging modality able to map (cm depth, ~0.1 mm resolution) optical absorption in vivo. Novel molecular absorbers will be developed to label the polymeric NVs. pH sensitive fluorophores will also be prepared and included in the NVs to study their cellular penetration. Labelled NVs will be characterized in terms of stability, biocompatibility, photophysical and photoacoustic properties. The kinetic of their intratissue and intracellular accumulation will be mapped in a mouse model by PAI and fluorescence imaging.