Wood, Cayla A.Han, SangheonKim, Chang SooWen, YunfeiSampaio, Diego R. T.Harris, Justin T.Homan, Kimberly A.Swain, Jody L.Emelianov, Stanislav Y.Sood, Anil K.Cook, Jason R.Sokolov, Konstantin V.Bouchard, Richard R.2021-09-232021-09-232021Wood, Cayla A., Han, Sangheon, Kim, Chang Soo, et al.. "Clinically translatable quantitative molecular photoacoustic imaging with liposome-encapsulated ICG J-aggregates." <i>Nature Communications,</i> 12, (2021) Springer Nature: 5410. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25452-3.https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111404Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a functional and molecular imaging technique capable of high sensitivity and spatiotemporal resolution at depth. Widespread use of PA imaging, however, is limited by currently available contrast agents, which either lack PA-signal-generation ability for deep imaging or their absorbance spectra overlap with hemoglobin, reducing sensitivity. Here we report on a PA contrast agent based on targeted liposomes loaded with J-aggregated indocyanine green (ICG) dye (i.e., PAtrace) that we synthesized, bioconjugated, and characterized to addresses these limitations. We then validated PAtrace in phantom, in vitro, and in vivo PA imaging environments for both spectral unmixing accuracy and targeting efficacy in a folate receptor alpha-positive ovarian cancer model. These study results show that PAtrace concurrently provides significantly improved contrast-agent quantification/sensitivity and SO2 estimation accuracy compared to monomeric ICG. PAtrace’s performance attributes and composition of FDA-approved components make it a promising agent for future clinical molecular PA imaging.engThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.Journal articles41467-021-25452-3https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25452-3