Targeted Photoacoustic Imaging of Brain Tumor Mediated by Neutrophils Engineered with Lipid-Based Molecular Probe

The delivery of imaging agents to brain tumor sites has been a longstanding hindrance, because of the presence of blood-brain barriers (BBB) and the complex brain tumor microenvironment. The living cell-based delivery system has shown tantalizing prospects for therapeutic applications targeting oncological diseases. Herein, we design a lipid-decorated molecular photoacoustic contrast agent TFML, which can effectively label harvested live neutrophils without affecting the activation and transmigration functions. After labeling neutrophils with TFML probes, TFML-labeled neutrophil (TFML-NE) was adoptively transferred into the recipient body and demonstrated strong PA signals, good brain tumor-targeting capability, and was applied for mice glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) detection. The successful development of TFML probes for neutrophil labeling and brain tumor targeting PAI presents a promising prospect for neutrophil-based nanotherapeutics studies.