Magnetic core mesoporous silica nanoparticles doped with dacarbazine and labelled with 99mTc for early and differential detection of metastatic melanoma by single photon emission computed tomography.

Cancer is responsible for more than 12% of all causes of death in the world, with an annual death rate of more than 7 million people. In this scenario melanoma is one of the most aggressive ones with serious limitation in early detection and therapy. In this direction we developed, characterized and tested in vivo a new drug delivery system based on magnetic core-mesoporous silica nanoparticle that has been doped with dacarbazine and labelled with technetium 99 m to be used as nano-imaging agent (nanoradiopharmaceutical) for early and differential diagnosis and melanoma by single photon emission computed tomography. The results demonstrated the ability of the magnetic core-mesoporous silica to be efficiently (>98%) doped with dacarbazine and also efficiently labelled with 99mTc (technetium 99 m) (>99%). The in vivo test, using inducted mice with melanoma, demonstrated the EPR effect of the magnetic core-mesoporous silica nanoparticles doped with dacarbazine and labelled with technetium 99 metastable when injected intratumorally and the possibility to be used as systemic injection too. In both cases, magnetic core-mesoporous silica nanoparticles doped with dacarbazine and labelled with technetium 99 metastable showed to be a reliable and efficient nano-imaging agent for melanoma.