Abstract
The studies to apply imaging with nanoparticles to an elucidation of a mechanism of cancer or a development of diagnostic technology of cancer have received a lot of attention in recent years. We created novel nanoperticles which possess fluorescence or X-ray absorption and then combined such technology with own of optical system and image analysis system for development of quantitative nano-bio-imaging, in order to visualize disease state of cancer. In this review paper, we introduce three topics of cancer studies using the nano-bio-imaging. The first topic is analysis of mechanisms of cancer metastasis. We have developed a method for in vivo imaging with very high spatial accuracy（～9nm） using quantum dots and succeeded in tracking the membrane protein during metastasis in living mice. The second topic is development of a cancer detection method. We created gold nanoparticles conjugated with polyethylene glycol chains as a new contrast agent and succeeded in imaging millimeter-sized microtumors with X-ray computed tomography by injecting the nanoparticles into tumor-bearing mice. The third topic is development of technology to predict drug efficacy in chemotherapy given before surgery of human breast cancer. We created organic fluorophore assembly-conjugated nanoparticles suitable for immunohistochemistry and applied the nanoparticles to categorize the response to molecular target-based drug therapy in breast cancer patients. We hope that these topics are useful to the reader.
