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Tracking the in vivo spatio-temporal patterns of neovascularization via NIR-II fluorescence imaging

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Abstract

The in vivo spatio-temporal patterns of neovascularization are still poorly understood because it is limited to multi-scale techniques from the cellular level to living animal level. Owing to deep tissue-penetration and zero autofluorescence background, the second near-infrared (NIR-II, 1,000–1,700 nm) fluorescence imaging recently shows promise in breaking through this dilemma by dynamically tracking the pathophysiological process of neovascularization in vivo. Here, NIR-II fluorescence imaging was recruited for monitoring blood vessels in order to visualize the vascular injury and quantitively assess neovascularization in mouse models of acute skeleton muscle contusion and hindlimb ischemia. The temporal analysis of real-time NIR-II fluorescence intensity demonstrated that the blood flow perfusion of ischemia area was able to rapidly restore to 96% of pre-ischemic state within one week. Moreover, the spatial analysis revealed that the lower and outer quadrants of ischemia area in the mouse model of hindlimb ischemia always had relatively high blood flow perfusion compared with other quadrants during three weeks post-ischemia, and even exceeded pre-ischemic quantity at 21 days post-ischemia. In conclusion, this in vivo imaging technique has significant potential utility for studying the spatio-temporal patterns of neovascularization in vivo.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank Qiangbin Wang from the Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lihua Wang, Yanhong Sun and Meiling Yan from Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences for providing the NIR-II in vivo imaging instrument. The authors acknowledge fundings from the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2016YFC1100300), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 81572108, 81772339, 8181101445, 81811530750, 81811530389, and 81972129), the Key Clinical Medicine Center of Shanghai (No. 2017ZZ01006), Sanming Project of Medicine in Shenzhen (No. SZSM201612078), Shanghai Rising-Star Project (No. 18QB1400500) and the Introduction Project of Clinical Medicine Expert Team for Suzhou (No. SZYJTD201714), Development Project of Shanghai Peak Disciplines-Integrative Medicine (No. 20180101), and Shanghai Committee of Science and Technology (Nos. 19441901600 and 19441902000).

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  1. Mo Chen and Sijia Feng contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Sports Medicine of Fudan University, Department of Orthopaedic Sports Medicine, Huashan Hospital, Fudan University, Shanghai, 200041, China

    Mo Chen, Sijia Feng, Yimeng Yang, Yunxia Li, Jian Zhang, Shiyi Chen & Jun Chen

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  1. Mo Chen
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  2. Sijia Feng
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  3. Yimeng Yang
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  7. Jun Chen
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Correspondence to Shiyi Chen or Jun Chen.

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Chen, M., Feng, S., Yang, Y. et al. Tracking the in vivo spatio-temporal patterns of neovascularization via NIR-II fluorescence imaging. Nano Res. 13, 3123–3129 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-020-2982-7

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