Abstract 14158: Ceria/Iron Oxide and Silver/Iron Oxide Nanohybrids: New Classes of Materials for Theranostics of Cardiovascular Diseases

Introduction: The need for efficient and biocompatible treatment methods that can simultaneously deliver imaging and therapeutic agents for combined diagnosis and therapy have resulted in the development of theranostic nanoparticles in recent times. Nanotheranostics represent one of the last frontiers in precision medicine and provide real-time information about drug biodistribution, release, and targeted treatment in vivo.

Hypothesis: Here we aim to develop biocompatible smart nanomaterials for efficient theranostics of cardiovascular diseases.

Methods: We have developed various hybrid materials based on metal and metal oxide such as iron oxide, ceria, and silver for diagnosis and treatment of thrombosis, atherosclerosis and inflammatory diseases. Iron oxide offers magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) capability. Ceria provides antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. The incorporation of silver onto the particles not only provides photoacoustic imaging capability but also allows photothermal therapy. The developed nanohybrids were labelled with fluorescence molecules to enable optical imaging, and also tagged with targeting ligands for targeted delivery of the materials.

Results: The ceria/iron oxide nanohybrids showed excellent theranostic property in a liver inflammation mouse model, and in an atherosclerosis model. MRI was successfully employed to monitor the delivery of the materials and detect the inflammation, and atherosclerosis. The particles could reverse liver inflammation and inhibit atherosclerosis progression while did not show any adverse effects systemically. The other nanohybrids, silver/iron oxide, exhibited multimodal imaging capability where both MRI and photoacoustic imaging could be used to image the materials and thus allowed the detection of thrombosis in mouse models. Triggered by 808nm light, the nanoparticles could induce excellent thrombolysis effect and completely restored blood flow in the clotted arteries. Interestingly, this material did not show any systemic adverse effect.

Conclusions: Our data show that these new classes of materials are promising theranostic approaches for imaging and treating thrombosis and inflammation diseases such as atherosclerosis and liver inflammation.