The receptor tyrosine kinase Mer (MERTK) is a promising drug target in cancer, where it can influence the metastasis-promoting signaling of both tumor cells and immune cells alike; however, no small molecule probes currently exist to selectively image Mer. In this work, we design and synthesize a selective near-infrared fluorescent molecular probe of Mer (MERi-SiR). Confocal microscopy of metastases in mice reveals predominant probe accumulation in Mer-expressing tumor-associated macrophages.
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Miller et al. (2017) studied this question.
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