Open AccessIn vivo fluorescence molecular imaging of the vascular endothelial growth factor in rats with early diabetic retinopathy
Author(s) -
Lu Zhang,
Yue Ding,
Xinjian Chen,
Dehui Xiang,
Fei Shi,
Yanyun Chen,
Shenshen Yan,
Mengjie Zhang,
Jie Tian,
Sobha Sivaprasad,
Yang Du,
Zhi Yang,
Bei Tian
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
biomedical optics express
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.362
H-Index - 86
ISSN - 2156-7085
DOI - 10.1364/boe.439446
Subject(s) - vascular endothelial growth factor , molecular imaging , diabetic retinopathy , in vivo , ex vivo , pathology , preclinical imaging , fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy , medicine , retinal , ophthalmology , vegf receptors , retina , vascular endothelial growth factor a , fluorescence , cancer research , biology , diabetes mellitus , endocrinology , neuroscience , optics , physics , microbiology and biotechnology
Anti-vascular endothelial growth factor (anti-VEGF) therapy is effective for reducing the severity level of diabetic retinopathy (DR). However, it is difficult to determine the in vivo spatial and temporal expression of VEGF in the DR retina at an early stage. Here, we report a quantitatively fluorescence molecular imaging and image analysis method by creating a VEGF targeted fluorescence imaging probe, which can potentially detect and predict anti-VEGF treatment response. Moreover, the ex vivo multiscale fluorescence imaging demonstrated the spatial correlation between VEGF relative expression and vascular abnormalities in two and three dimensions. It revealed that VEGF was mainly abnormally expressed at the bifurcation of the microvessels, which advances the knowledge of the DR progression by molecular fluorescence imaging. Our study has the potential to achieve early detection of DR disease, provide more insight into understanding anti-VEGF treatment, and may help stratify patients based on the molecular imaging of retinal VEGF.