With more and more kidney cancers being diagnosed in the early stage, partial nephrectomy is becoming an increasingly important treatment for kidney cancers, in particular for those patients who have poor kidney function or cancer on both kidneys. In the current clinical settings, X-ray computerized tomography (CT) is utilized first to noninvasively localize and stage the kidney cancers, followed by fluorescently imaging normal renal parenchyma to in situ guide partial nephrectomy. However, due to the limitations of current contrast agents for X-ray CT and fluorescence imaging of kidney cancers, hundreds of clinical case studies have shown that introducing clinically approved near infrared d...

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With more and more kidney cancers being diagnosed in the early stage, partial nephrectomy is becoming an increasingly important treatment for kidney cancers, in particular for those patients who have poor kidney function or cancer on both kidneys. In the current clinical settings, X-ray computerized tomography (CT) is utilized first to noninvasively localize and stage the kidney cancers, followed by fluorescently imaging normal renal parenchyma to in situ guide partial nephrectomy. However, due to the limitations of current contrast agents for X-ray CT and fluorescence imaging of kidney cancers, hundreds of clinical case studies have shown that introducing clinically approved near infrared dyes in partial nephrectomy has not resulted in significant improvement in reducing positive margin rates in the kidney cancer surgery. The objective of this proposal is to advance both CT and fluorescence imaging of kidney cancers with ICG conjugated glutathione coated sub-nm gold nanoclusters (GS-AuNCs), of which kidney retention, tumor targeting, clearance as well as signal output can be precisely modulated with unique physiological functions of glutathione and size-dependent particle transport in the sub-nm regime to achieve high contrast enhancements. Success of the proposed studies will allow us to use a single nanoprobe with size-and glutathione-mediated in vivo transport and signal outputs to achieve high contrast in both X-ray CT and fluorescence imaging of kidney cancers in the current clinical settings. Not limited to high-contrast kidney imaging, the success also potentially opens up a new path to more effectively and specifically deliver anticancer drugs to the kidney cancers that cannot be treated with surgical resection.

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