Leland Stanford Junior University

Alexander Antaris

Hongjie Dai

Zhen Cheng

Hao Chen

Xuechuan Hong

Kai Cheng

Guosong Hong

Shuo Diao

Disclosed is a small molecule dye for use in imaging in the near-infrared window, namely between 1000 nm-1700 nm wavelength. The present dyes are also useful for photoacoustic imaging and photothermal therapy. The dyes have a structure of a D-A-D (donor-acceptor-donor) fluorescent compound core and side chains rendering the compounds water soluble and easily conjugated to hydrophilic polymers and/or targeting ligands. Further disclosed is compound, CH1055 that can be PEGylated, conjugated to a targeting ligand, or conjugated to taurine. Key steps utilized to assemble the core structure of the target included a cross-Suzuki coupling reaction, iron reduction and N-thionylaniline induced ring closure. Four carboxylic acid groups were introduced into the donor-acceptor-donor (D-A-D) type fluorescent compound to impart a certain aqueous solubility and to allow facile conjugation to targeting ligands.

Small molecule dye for molecular imaging and photothermal therapy

Disclosed are methods and devices for confocal microscopy in the near-infrared. wavelength. The device uses a near-infrared (NIR) light producing source such as laser; optical components designed to reflect and transmit NIR from a sample; and an NIR detector coupled to a computer for constructing a focal plane image from a raster scan. The detector may be a photodiode or photo-multiplier tube for detecting fluorescence signals in the NIR (800-1700 nm) wavelength range using a variety of NIR-I (800-1000 nm) and NIR-II (1000-1700 nm) dyes and nanomaterials. An imaging method is described using the NIR-confocal microscope for slice by slice 3D imaging of biological tissues throughout a thickness up to, for example, 5 mm in the NIR-II window. The reduced scattering in NIR-II allows for tissue penetration up to about 5-10 mm, superior to &#x2dc;0.2 mm afforded by conventional imaging.

Near-infrared-II confocal microscope and methods of use

Growing community of inventors

Stanford, CA, United States of America

Alexander Antaris