ANR 2016 - JCJC - SPID - Smart Probes for Imaging metal-based Drugs

ANR JCJC program 2016 led by ICMUB (Prof. Ewen BODIO)

ANR details

How to monitor a drug for understanding how it works and for improving it?

Metal complexes are widely used nowadays to treat numerous pathologies (cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, osteoporosis, etc.). However, despite their daily clinical use, their mechanisms of action are still poorly understood. An interesting strategy for elucidating them consists in grafting a probe onto the therapeutic agent in order to be able to follow it in vitro and in vivo by medical imaging. However, the problem of most trackable therapeutic agents is the reliability of the information they provide. Indeed, if the link between the probe and the therapeutic part is broken, the signal observed will correspond only to the probe and not to the therapeutic agent, rendering this information useless. It is therefore essential to know whether this link is intact or not.
Thus the main objective of this project is to develop so-called smart probes to ensure in real time the integrity of the trackable therapeutic agent, but this will be accompanied by a search for systems compatible with in vivo studies and new and more effective therapeutic agents.

Principal investigator:  Prof. Ewen BODIO (ICMUB - UMR 6302)