Toward the Clinical Development and Validation of a Thy1-Targeted Ultrasound Contrast Agent for the Early Detection of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma.

ABSTRACT: Early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) represents the most significant step toward the treatment of this aggressive lethal disease. Previously, we engineered a preclinical Thy1-targeted microbubble (MBThy1) contrast agent that specifically recognizes Thy1 antigen overexpressed in the vasculature of murine PDAC tissues by ultrasound (US) imaging. In this study, we adopted a single-chain variable fragment (scFv) site-specific bioconjugation approach to construct clinically translatable MBThy1-scFv and test for its efficacy in vivo in murine PDAC imaging, and functionally evaluated the binding specificity of scFv ligand to human Thy1 in patient PDAC tissues ex vivo.

Materials and methods

We recombinantly expressed the Thy1-scFv with a carboxy-terminus cysteine resid

SUBMITTER: Bam R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7541735 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature