An In Vivo Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer-Based Imaging Platform for Targeted Drug Discovery and Cancer Therapy

Fuqiang Xing; Nana Ai; Shigao Huang; Cheng Jiang; Muhammad Jameel Mughal; Wei Ge; Guanyu Wang; Chu-Xia Deng

doi:10.3389/fbioe.2022.839078

An In Vivo Fluorescence Resonance Energy Transfer-Based Imaging Platform for Targeted Drug Discovery and Cancer Therapy

Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2022 Feb 14:10:839078. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2022.839078. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Fuqiang Xing^{1

2

3}, Nana Ai⁴, Shigao Huang¹, Cheng Jiang⁵, Muhammad Jameel Mughal¹, Wei Ge⁴, Guanyu Wang^{2

5}, Chu-Xia Deng¹

Affiliations

¹ Cancer Center, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.
² Department of Biology, School of Life Sciences, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computational Science and Material Design, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China.
³ Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Biomedical Imaging and Guangdong Provincial Engineering Research Center of Molecular Imaging, The Fifth Affiliated Hospital, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai, China.
⁴ Centre of Reproduction, Development and Aging, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Macau, Macau SAR, China.
⁵ School of Life and Health Sciences, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen, China.

Abstract

In the present study, an efficient in vivo drug screening platform is established based on FRET technique. We transfected cancer cells with FRET-based caspase-3 (C3) sensor and validated the cell lines by detecting the change in FRET signal caused by the in vitro drug-induced cell apoptosis. Furthermore, the C3 expressing cancer cells were then injected into zebrafish embryos and nude mice to establish the corresponding in vivo xenograft models. We found that cancer cell lines expressing C3 were effective in detecting cell death following drug treatment, including the detection of the tipping point of apoptosis. The drug-induced cell apoptosis was also observed in both zebrafish embryos and nude mice xenograft models. Overall, the FRET-based platform, through in vivo imaging, is potentially useful to improve drug screening efficiency.

Keywords: FRET technique; apoptosis; cancer therapy; drug discovery; xenograft model.