Typologie d'actualités: Team Chemistry, Imaging and Exobiology

Professor Vincent L. Pecoraro of the University of Michigan is invited at the CBM from May to July 2024 through a LE STUDIUM Research Professorship

Professor Pecoraro is internationally recognized for his major contributions in bioinorganic chemistry, notably on the role of manganese complexes and clusters in photosynthetic water oxidation. He is also a pioneer in the design of metalloenzyme mimetics and in the study of metallacrown complexes with unique magnetic and/or luminescence properties for developments in medical imaging, a field in which several patents have recently been filed with the team “Luminescent lanthanide compounds, optical spectroscopy and bioimaging” from the CBM.

In 2021, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Aix-Marseille and a LE STUDIUM Research Professorship (Loire Valley Institute). In addition, Professor Pecoraro is the 2021 recipient of the Franco-American award from the American Chemical Society and the “Société Chimique de France”.

He is one of the co-founder of the startup VIEWaves founded in Orléans in March 2022 that aims at the commercialization of the optical imaging agents emitting in the near-Infrared domain created on the basis of the collaborative work conducted with the team at CBM.

Dual agents for non-invasive imaging of living organisms

Researchers in the "Lanthanide Luminescent Compounds, Spectroscopy and Optical Bioimaging" team have designed a molecular probe that can image living organisms using both near-infrared (NIR) luminescence and photoacoustic (PA) signal detection. These two complementary imaging techniques make it possible to monitor biological events precisely, in real time and non-invasively.

Find out more

A Dual-Mode Near-Infrared Optical and Photoacoustic Imaging Agent Based on a Low Energy Absorbing Ytterbium Complex
Anton Kovalenko, Svetlana V. Eliseeva, Guillaume Collet, Saïda El Abdellaoui, Sharuja Natkunarajah, Stéphanie Lerondel, Laure Guénée, Céline Besnard & Stéphane Petoud
JACS 2024
https://doi.org/10.1021/jacs.4c03406

Breast cancer: towards early diagnosis by imaging

In vivo imaging of metastatic breast cancer tumors at very early stages is about to become possible. A team of chemists and biologists from the Center for Molecular Biophysics (CNRS) has indeed developed a new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) probe which has a selective affinity for an emerging biomarker of metastatic breast cancer: Netrin- 1. Find out more on the Cnrs Chimie website.

See more and Cnrs Chmie website.

Reference
Peptide-Conjugated MRI Probe Targeted to Netrin-1, a Novel Metastatic Breast Cancer Biomarker
Clémentine Moreau, Tea Lukačević, Agnès Pallier, Julien Sobilo, Samia Aci-Sèche, Norbert Garnier, Sandra Même, Éva Tóth & Sara Lacerda
Bioconjugate Chemistry 2024
https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.bioconjchem.3c00558

Watching enzymes work in vivo with rare-earth-based molecular probes

Scientists at the CNRS Centre de Biophysique Moléculaire (CBM) in Orléans and the Institut de Chimie des Substances Naturelles (CNRS/Université Paris-Saclay) have designed luminescent probes. They are based on complexes of lanthanides (Ln), a series of rare-earth metals whose trivalent Ln3+ ions are luminescent. The special feature of these probes is that the activity of certain enzymes can modify their luminescence in the near infrared, as well as the signal observed on MRI. These probes make it possible to track the catalytic activity of an enzyme with a single molecule using several complementary imaging techniques: MRI and near-infrared optics. Essential for unambiguous detection of a biological phenomenon, this dual imaging with a single molecule avoids biases due to the use of chemically different imaging agents for each imaging technique.

This study, published in the journal Angewandte Chemie International Edition, paves the way for new non-invasive diagnostic strategies.

This work has been reported on the Cnrs Chimie website

Article reference
Lanthanide-Based Probes for Imaging Detection of Enzyme Activities by NIR Luminescence, T1- and ParaCEST MRI
Rémy Jouclas, Sophie Laine, Svetlana V. Eliseeva, Jérémie Mandel, Frédéric Szeremeta, Pascal Retailleau, Jiefang He, Jean-Francois Gallard, Agnès Pallier, Célia S. Bonnet, Stéphane Petoud, Philippe Durand & Éva Tóth
Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. 2024
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/anie.202317728