St. Scientists from St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU) have made it possible to revolutionize the clarity of MRI images by increasing the effectiveness of blue dyes in the diagnosis of cancer and other diseases by a million times. St. Petersburg State University reported this to socialbites.ca.
Cyan dyes are organic substances with high color fastness and density. They are obtained through chemical synthesis and are used in various fields, from textiles and cosmetics to biochemistry and medical research. Dyes can penetrate desired cells of the body and highlight them on MRI images.
“During our work, we managed to increase the efficiency of cyanine dyes using the giant Raman scattering method, which made it possible to amplify the optical signal a million times,” said Elena Solovyova, head of the plasmon-enhanced laboratory. To socialbites.ca St. He said spectroscopy and bioimaging were performed at St. Petersburg State University.
Researchers have improved the performance of blue dyes in medical diagnostics using gold nanoparticles. Microscopic metal particles bind to dye molecules and help scatter light, thus increasing the optical signal.
Scientists experimented with gold particles of different shapes and found that nanorods showed the best results.
The resulting hybrids of gold nanorods and cyanine dyes have high potential for use as contrast agents in certain types of medical tomography.
In addition, they can be used in the treatment of oncological diseases using local hyperthermia, which, when spot heating of cancer cells, leads to their death with minimal impact on healthy cells.
The study was carried out within the framework of the project “Multimodal plasmonic tags for bioimaging and therapeutic hyperthermia” supported by the Russian Science Foundation.
Previous scientists was created A new method to diagnose cancer using fluorescent peptides.