New Progress in Human Body Temperature Sensitive MRI

MRI is a kind of excellent non-invasive clinical diagnosis method. However, it is challenge to precisely detect the difference of micro-environment between tumor and normal tissue, especially the tiny difference in temperature, due to the intrinsically poor sensitivity of MRI. Recently, Prof. Xin Zhou‘s lab at Wuhan Institute of Physics and Mathematics, CAS, developed a novel detection method for tiny temperature difference in the physiological temperature range, and the experimental achievements have been published as a cover article in a recent issue of the journal of Chemical Communications.

(http://pubs.rsc.org/en/Content/ArticleLanding/2015/CC/C5CC02587G)

Upper: The Cover of Chemical Communications (Issue 44, 2015).

Lower: Body temperature sensitive MRI with a new CEST MRI contrast agent.

The researchers designed and prepared a micelle MRI contrast agent, which was able to respond to the tiny temperature difference in the physiological temperature range. Using thermo sensitive micelle as a platform, a nano contrast agent with the size of <100 nm was designed based on chemical exchange transfer exchange (CEST) MRI. The structure and morphology of the micelle changes around 37 degrees celsius, and thus the chemical exchange rate of the bond water in the contrast agent varies, resulting in a obvious change of the CEST effect. Though the CEST MRI, the "smart" enhancements of MRI signal at difference temperatures were achieved. As the responsive temperature is close to human physiologicaltemperature, this contrast agent shows a great potential in the clinical applications.

This research was supported by NSFC (81227902, 21305156).

News link: http://www.cas.cn/syky/201506/t20150609_4371157.shtml

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