作者
Jong-Jin Kim,Yong‐An Lee,Dongdong Su,Jungyeol Lee,Sung-Jin Park,Beomsue Kim,Jia Hui Jane Lee,Xiao Liu,Seong Soon Kim,Myung Ae Bae,Jung Hoon Lee,Seong-Wook Hong,Lu Wang,Animesh Samanta,Hyeokjin Kwon,Soyoung Choi,Junyoung Kim,Young Hyun Yu,Hyung‐Ho Ha,Zhenxun Wang,Wai Leong Tam,Bing Lim,Nam‐Young Kang,Young‐Tae Chang
摘要
Tumor initiating cells (TIC) are resistant to conventional anticancer therapy and associated with metastasis and relapse in cancer. Although various TIC markers and their antibodies have been proposed, it is limited to the use of antibodies for in vivo imaging or treatment of TIC. In this study, we discovered heme oxygenase 2 (HMOX2) as a novel biomarker for TIC and developed a selective small molecule probe TiNIR (tumor initiating cell probe with near infrared). TiNIR detects and enriches the functionally active TIC in human lung tumors, and through the photoacoustic property, TiNIR also visualizes lung TIC in the patient-derived xenograft (PDX) model. Furthermore, we demonstrate that TiNIR inhibits tumor growth by blocking the function of HMOX2, resulting in significantly increased survival rates of the cancer model mice. The novel therapeutic target HMOX2 and its fluorescent ligand TiNIR will open a new path for the molecular level of lung TIC diagnosis and treatment.