I’d like to set up collaboration with those who have an access to human and/or canine prostates with cancer and might be interested in 1) exploring interstitial optical studies of prostates with cancer for diagnostic purposes and 2) using gold nanoparticles as contrast agents for prostate cancer detection. The goal is two-fold.

First, we want to establish a correlation between concentrations of major chromophores like Hb, HbO2 and H2O and a presence of PC, as well as measure optical absorption and scattering parameters of the organ on ex vivo excised prostates. Since those prostates will be excised anyway we’d like to perform optical measurements on them after excision before they go for some other destructive tests etc. Once this stage is completed and data make sense, we can proceed to a development of an endoscope for performing such measurements in vivo (illumination via rectum, detection via urethra). The approach would be similar to cystoscopy and will utilize a side-firing fiber (or its variation) as a detector and a cylindrical diffuser as the light source.

Second, we would like to target PC biomarkers (like PSMA) in the gland, functionalize gold nanoparticles with appropriate surface agents, deliver Au NPs to the prostate with cancer and detect them with the same technique (illumination via rectum, detection via urethra). This project is more challenging on a number of reasons: 1) preparing Au NPs for targeting PMSA and still protected from RES that can be efficiently accumulated in the gland has never been done (most studies in vitro); 2) since such studies would require working with Au NPs and patients, FDA approval can be an issue. Doing these experiments in dogs would be almost ideal. However, there are conflicting reports on PSMA as a biomarker in canine prostate cancer (see below). Thus, if PSMA can indeed be used and targeted in canine PC, no human prostates would be involved and entire experiments can be performed on canine prostates.

https://www.researchgate.net/post/Expression_of_PSMA_in_human_vs_canine_prostate_a_useful_biomarker_in_PC_studies_in_the_canine_model_or_NOT

Why not going with rats, for example? Because of the size of the prostate. We really want to go through cm’s of prostate tissue, and dog’s prostate is almost an ideal substitute for a human prostate (sizewise). On the other hand, we’d like to target realistic Au NPs concentrations in the prostate that can be achieved in such studies. So, I’d really like to get your thoughts and possibly practical suggestions on this aspect. I do believe that such molecular imaging of PC via optical detection of Au NPs may not only improve the early cancer detection but pave the way for Au NPs-mediated thermal therapies for focal cancer ablation (but this is a scientist talking:) The nature of this project would require a multidisciplinary team of oncology urologists, molecular biologists, chemists.

We can detect Au NPs in the prostate via urethra using optical radiance technique. Moreover, the sensitivity is much better than the sensitivity of the clinical CT (see the comparison in the publication and relevant references). We can see