Nanoprobes for in vivo drug toxicity imaging

Researchers in Dr. Jianghong Rao's lab have developed nanoprobes for monitoring drug-induced hepatotoxicity in vivo in real time. Drug toxicity is a long-standing concern of modern medicine. Oxidative and nitrosative stress underlie drug toxicity due to the metabolic bioactivation of drugs to reactive metabolites. The liver is the organ most frequently affected. In addition to effects on the end-user, drug-induced hepatotoxicity is the single most important cause of both FDA non-approval and drug withdrawal from the market. Current preclinical methods to predict drug toxicity are limited as they cannot be used in live animals and do not analyze biomarkers that are mechanistically linked to the toxicity of the parent drug compound. To overcome this limitation, the inventors designed this nanoprobe which measures oxidative and nitrosative stress and thus can uniquely image drug toxicity in real time in live animals.

Stage of research
The nanoprobe was used in mice for real-time in vivo monitoring of hepatotoxicity following challenge with two known hepatotoxic drugs. The imaging results were validated with histological analysis.