Towards optimized naphthalocyanines as sonochromes for photoacoustic imaging in vivo

Mitchell J Duffy; Oriol Planas; Andreas Faust; Thomas Vogl; Sven Hermann; Michael Schäfers; Santi Nonell; Cristian A Strassert

doi:10.1016/j.pacs.2017.12.001

Towards optimized naphthalocyanines as sonochromes for photoacoustic imaging in vivo

Photoacoustics. 2018 Jan 11:9:49-61. doi: 10.1016/j.pacs.2017.12.001. eCollection 2018 Mar.

Authors

Mitchell J Duffy^{1

2}, Oriol Planas³, Andreas Faust^{1

2}, Thomas Vogl⁴, Sven Hermann^{1

2}, Michael Schäfers^{1

2

5}, Santi Nonell³, Cristian A Strassert⁶

Affiliations

¹ European Institute for Molecular Imaging (EIMI), University of Münster, Germany.
² Cells-in-Motion Cluster of Excellence (EXC 1003-CiM), University of Münster, Germany.
³ Institut Químic de Sarrià, Universitat Ramon Llull, Spain.
⁴ Institut für Immunologie, University of Münster, Germany.
⁵ Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital of Münster, Germany.
⁶ Physikalisches Institut and Center for Nanotechnology (CeNTech) University of Münster, Germany.

Abstract

In this paper we establish a methodology to predict photoacoustic imaging capabilities from the structure of absorber molecules (sonochromes). The comparative in vitro and in vivo screening of naphthalocyanines and cyanine dyes has shown a substitution pattern dependent shift in photoacoustic excitation wavelength, with distal substitution producing the preferred maximum around 800 nm. Central ion change showed variable production of photoacoustic signals, as well as singlet oxygen photoproduction and fluorescence with the optimum for photoacoustic imaging being nickel(II). Our approach paves the way for the design, evaluation and realization of optimized sonochromes as photoacoustic contrast agents.

Keywords: Naphthalocyanines; Spectroscopy.