Endoscopic molecular imaging of early gastric cancer using fluorescently labeled human H-ferritin nanoparticle

We developed a fluorescently labeled human heavy-chain ferritin (HFn) nanoparticle, which was incorporated by transferrin receptor positive tumor cells in a threshold-dependent manner. Targeted imaging using fluorescently labeled HFn is feasible with confocal laser endomicroscopy (CLE) on human gastric tumor bearing mice. Targeted imaging can also be observed in endoscopic specimens of early gastric cancer (EGC) patients with high specificity and sensitivity. The fluorescence intensity of HFn examined using CLE correlated well with the grade of EGCs confirmed by the histology. The fluorescently labeled HFn possesses potential clinical application for EGC detection.281