###Intraoperative biophotonic imaging systems for image-guided surgery
Project ID: 2228bd1075 (You will need this ID for your application)
Research Theme: Healthcare Technologies
UCL Lead department: Division of Surgery and Interventional Sciences
Lead Supervisor: Elnaz Yaghini
Project Summary:
Surgery remains one of the cornerstones of clinical treatment for multiple cancers. Incomplete tumour removal defined as ‘positive margins’ after surgery is inevitably associated with significantly higher rates of re-operation and lower survival. Positive tumour margins are currently diagnosed using intraoperative frozen section analysis. However, this technique is time consuming and can sample only a small fraction of the primary specimen and wound bed with limited accuracy. Therefore, development of a reliable technique for real-time intraoperative detection of tumour margin is an unmet clinical need.
A potential solution for real time tumour margin detection during surgical procedures is the use of intraoperative image-guided surgery techniques. The aims of our project are to develop novel multifunctional cancer-selective contrast agents for real-time intraoperative fluorescence-guided detection of tumours combined with other related optical imaging techniques. The project will be conducted at UCL Division of Surgery & Intervention Science and UCL Department of Chemistry.
The student will: (i) investigate conjugation of near-infrared dyes to peptides directed against receptors that are over-expressed in cancer cells; (ii) develop peptide-targeted liposomal nanoformulations of these dyes with smart “switch-on” capacity triggered by cellular uptake (iii) characterise photophysical properties of conjugate; (iv) perform in vitro validation of conjugates (v) perform in vivo validation of the conjugates: In vivo preclinical studies are essential for clinical translation. In this project conjugates with high labelling affinity to cancer cells will be employed for preclinical validation using in vivo tumour models.
Students will learn a broad range of skills including: (i) synthesis and characterization of the peptide targeted contrast agents and their liposome formulations, multidimensional fluorescence imaging (ii) In vitro skills: e.g., various optical imaging techniques, flow cytometry (iii) broad range of in vivo techniques including in vivo imaging in in vivo preclinical tumour models.