Molecular imaging is a young and growing discipline that aims at the development of new diagnostic technologies using specific reporters for the visualization of molecular processes in vivo, in particular those involved in pathological mechanisms. Their early detection may represent a decisive advantage for the choice and the follow-up of the therapeutic strategies.Among the contemporary methods of medical imaging, MRI offers the unique advantage of being non-invasive and of furnishing simultaneously - and with a high spatial resolution -anatomical, physiological, and molecular information. Nevertheless, the quite low efficiency of currently available MRI contrast agents represents a challenge with respect both to the improvement of more efficient reporters, as well as to the development of MR protocols adapted to their detection.A contrast agent for MR molecular imaging (MRMI) is a complex assembly made of a magnetic reporter, the �contrastophore�, linked to a vectorizing moiety specific to the structure to be targeted.Parallel to the development of paramagnetic complexes, large efforts are devoted to the production of superparamagnetic nanoparticles carrying a high payload of relaxivity. Those require new synthetic approaches as well as new characterization protocols.The specific molecular vector further linked to the nanoparticle can be selected among peptides identified by phage display or among the non-peptidic mimetics proposed in the literature.This lecture will present an overview of the current state of the field.

Design of nanoparticles for magnetic resonance molecular imaging: A multidisciplinary task

247th National Meeting (2014)

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