Biomedical imaging plays a pivotal role in oncological prognosis and guided treatments accounted by the ability to visualize anatomical structures such as lesions, vasculatures, enabling non-invasive real-time monitoring and provides necessary information for clinical assessments without any destruction and perturbation of patients’ tissue. To further classify the stage and aggressiveness of cancers, techniques such as immunohistochemistry (IHC) and target-specific contrast agents are developed to target and amplify the imaging signals for cancer biomarkers. Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer worldwide, with nearly 12% of women in the United States developing invasive breast cancer in their lifetime, and as better diagnostic tools are available, clinicians can better stratif...[ Read more ]

Biomedical imaging plays a pivotal role in oncological prognosis and guided treatments accounted by the ability to visualize anatomical structures such as lesions, vasculatures, enabling non-invasive real-time monitoring and provides necessary information for clinical assessments without any destruction and perturbation of patients’ tissue. To further classify the stage and aggressiveness of cancers, techniques such as immunohistochemistry (IHC) and target-specific contrast agents are developed to target and amplify the imaging signals for cancer biomarkers. Breast cancer is one of the most common cancer worldwide, with nearly 12% of women in the United States developing invasive breast cancer in their lifetime, and as better diagnostic tools are available, clinicians can better stratify patients and provide precision treatments for a noticeably better outcome. Therefore, it is essential to have ways to probe and gather both anatomical and molecular information for accurate diagnosis.

Herein, a novel protein-based exogenous contrast agent for photoacoustic imaging is proposed. The contrast agent capitalizes on the improved photostability and solubility of the far-red absorbing chlorophylls with the use of water-soluble chlorophyll-binding protein (WSCP). The contrast agent has shown promising properties for deep tissue in vivo photoacoustic imaging (PAI) and sheds light on the possibility of being used as a photosensitizer for photodynamic therapy (PDT).