In vivo spectroscopic photoacoustic imaging of tumor protease activity by using gold nanocage-based activatable nanoprobe

Malignant tumors appear to own the ability to recruit normal tissue cells that contribute to the tumorigenesis process by creating the 'tumor microenvironment'. MMPs, is one of the most significant family of proteinases that are related to tumor microenvironment. Recent understanding of MMPs has recognized its role as modulators in tumor microenvironment; however, the current strategies for in vivo MMPs visualization are not competent to provide adequate information with high contrast-to-noise ratio, high spatial resolution and high temporal resolution. In this work, an activatable nano-probe that couples strong plasmonic gold nanocages (GNC) & chromophores to be switched by MMP-2 was selected to improve the visualization of MMP-2 activity by using spectroscopic photoacoustic Imaging (PAI).