Magnetic Particle Imaging wins award

Jurie Tashkandi won best oral presentation award in Prato

Congratulations to Ms Jurie Tashkandi, PhD student supervised by Dr Karen Alt in the NanoTheranostics lab, who won the best oral presentation award at the international 'Antibody Technology and Therapeutics' Conference in Prato, Italy in September 2022.

The title of her presentation was "Magnetic Particle Imaging using Trastuzumab Targeted Nanoparticles for Cancer Imaging".

Jurie described how Magnetic Particle Imaging (MPI) offers a new approach to rapid and sensitive molecular imaging.

The modality's ability to directly detect Super Paramagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles (SPION) with exceptional contrast and sensitivity out competes that of clinically used systems such as MRI.

Further, the capability of MPI for absolute tracer quantification and its lack of depth attenuation affirms its applications across a variety of disciplines, with an increasing focus on cancer imaging. However, current cancer imaging applications are hindered by the SPION’s limited tumour accumulation and rapid sequestration by the hepatic system, causing sparse success. 

To offset this issue, antibody targeted SPION are a more powerful approach, leading to active pursuit and specificity to the tumour. Such systems have shown immense success in imaging of cancer in different preclinical settings. 

Jurie said, "In this project we describe the modification of a 25 nm SPION with Trastuzumab, a monoclonal antibody specific to the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), over-expressed in a variety of cancers. 

Jurie presenting at the Antibody Technology and Therapeutics
conference

"We describe the suitability of the novel alpha-HER2 conjugated SPION for MPI with a detection limit of a single microgram of iron and no impact to the antibodies binding functionality in vitro. 

"We also demonstrate its superior performance and blood circulation time in comparison to a non-targeted SPION for in vivo imaging."

The results highlight the strengths of antibody targeted tracers for enhanced cancer imaging using MPI, putting it forward as a favourable preclinical system. 

The study presents the first application of an antibody targeted SPION for cancer imaging using the newly installed MPI with CT scanner at Monash’s preclinical imaging facility.