The accuracy of intraoperative tumor margin assessment is the main challenge in breast conserving surgery (BCS). NIR-II fluorescence-guided surgery enables surgeons to visualize the tumor margins dynamically in real time and facilitate the precision of tumor resection. We develop an aptamer-conjugated NIR-II probe for intraoperative fluorescence imaging. Peglated indocyanine green (PEG-ICG) was conjugated with an aptamer SYL3C binding to EpCAM to synthesize the probe SYL3C-ICG. Human breast cancer cell lines with different expression levels of EpCAM were employed to assess its tumor-targeting capability. Tumor xenograft models were established to investigate the in vivo selectivity of SYL3C-ICG, and a segmental excision procedure was employed to evaluate the efficacy of the probe in navigating precise surgical resection under NIR-II imaging. In vitro and in vivo fluorescence imaging revealed that NIR-II provides superior imaging resolution and penetration depth compared to NIR-I, and SYL3C-ICG could selectively accumulate at the tumor site, which helps surgeons detect tiny residual malignant lesions invisible to the naked eye and reduce the postoperative recurrence rate.
Niu et al. (Tue,) studied this question.