Porphyrin-lipid assembled HDL-like nanovesicles for fluorescence imaging and PDT treatment of orthotopic brain glioma tumor

Glioblastoma is the most lethal form of brain tumors and one of the most fatal human cancers with universal recurrence post-surgical procedures and common failure in the salvage therapies. Fluorescence agents introduced to facilitate the identification of cancerous tissues in surgical resection are facing challenges such as low sensitivity and specificity and ineffective delivery to intracerebral tumor via systemic administration. Recently, we have developed a porphyrin-lipid assembled HDL-like nanovesicle (porphyHDL) with sub 20 nm in size. The highly packed porphyrin molecules in the assembly allows for the intrinsically labeling with Cu-64 and provides fluorescence emission and great PDT potency upon laser irradiation, thus making this nanocomplex a multifunctional reagent suitable for pre- and intra-operative imaging and surgical bed clean-up.