Application of Deuteporfin in the Metastatic Lymph Node Mapping of Pancreatic Cancer: An in vivo Study.

For most cancer patients, the presence of metastatic lymph nodes usually indicates regional recurrence and poor prognosis. Therefore, lymph node mapping is a requisite for disease staging, prognosis prediction and decision making in the treatment of cancer. Deuteporfin, a second-generation photosensitizer, has a maximum excitation wavelength that can reach the near infrared (NIR) region (650-700 nm). We aimed to take advantage of these aspects of deuteporfin and use it as a fluorescent probe for metastatic lymph node mapping in vivo using NIR fluorescent imaging. In our study, we further investigated whether a photosensitizer could be used as a tracer for metastatic lymph node mapping of pancreatic cancer based on previous reports. Compared to normal tissues, tumor tissues including primary tumors and metastatic lymph nodes had a higher uptake ability of deuteporfin (P < 0.05). Our research confirmed this targeting property of deuteporfin using in vivo fluorescent imaging. Consistent with observations from in vivo imaging experiments, frozen sections of metastatic lymph nodes intuitively displayed significantly higher and wider distributions of deuteporfin than normal sections.