Reporter：Dr. Hushan Yuan (Gordon Center for Medical Imaging, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School)

Inviter：    Prof. Runtao Li

Date/Time：June 22th, 2018        10:00 am

Place：     Pharmacy building 216 meeting room 

  About the Reporter    

Dr. Hushan Yuan obtained his B.S. in chemistry from Zhengzhou University, and his Ph.D. in chemistry from The Institute of Chemistry at The Chinese Academy of Sciences. He did post-doctoral fellowships in King’s College London and Boston College. Dr. Yuan joined Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) in 2003 and currently has an appointment with the Gordon Center for Medical Imaging (GCMI), MGH, at Harvard Medical School. His academic research interests include (i) nanomedicine and drug delivery, (ii) multifunctional imaging probe chemistries and, (iii) theranostic techniques for cell stress induced by ischemia and cancer chemotherapy.

  Report Summaries   

Heat Induced Radiolabeling (HIR) of Feraheme (FH) nanoparticles (NP)is a recently developed chelator free, radiocation surface adsorption (RSA) method using heat (120°C) to bond cations to the iron oxide core of FH NP in less than 3 hours. Together with FH’s surface modifications by attaching of functional groups (fluorochromes and other targeting groups), the chemistries have repurposed the FH NP from its current uses of iron anemia treatment (approved indication) and MR contrast agent (off-label use) to a radiolabeled PET, SPECT, or fluorescent imaging agent for cell labeling both in vivo and ex vivo. When injected HIR-FH or fluorescent-FH, FH NPs can be internalized by circulating monocytes that traffic to normal lymph nodes and abnormal inflammatory sites, which generates the potential for lymph node mapping and imaging for various inflammations. The attachments of bioactive molecules so-called targeting groups (such as folate, cRGD, and PSMA-inhibitor) grant HIR-FH NP the ability to label cancer cells through receptor mediation. When they were attached onto HIR FH NPs, cell-penetrating peptides (CPP, such as protamine) relocate the particles into the lymphocytes, which permits PET tracking of T and B cells to provide valuable information for immunotherapy and inflammatory diseases.