There is a clinical need for targeted MRI-contrast agents that are more sensitive and specific in detection of glioma than conventional MRI contrast. We use interleukin-13 (IL-13) as targeting ligand because 75% of glioma cells overexpress IL-13Rα2 significantly1. We investigated the relative efficacy of liposomes conjugated with wild type IL-13 to a variant of IL-13, known as Targeted Quadruple Mutant13 (TQM-13) that has been shown to be more selective for the IL-13Rα2 and binds with higher affinity than the wide type. Our targeted MRI agent, TQM-13-liposomes-Gd, produced specific MRI contrast, delineating tumor, inflamed and normal tissues.
This abstract and the presentation materials are available to members only; a login is required.