Designer therapeutic and diagnostic tools: From cancer to chemical weapons Gemma-Louise Davies 2 , Ziwei Zhang 1 , Viliyana Lewis 2 , Gareth Williams 1 1 School of Pharmacy, University College London, UK, 2 Department of Chemistry, University College London, UK Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a powerful non-invasive technique which becomes considerably more potent when contrast agents (CAs) are introduced. Molecular contrast agents based on Gd-chelates (e.g. Dotarem ® ) are regularly used in the clinic, however these usually lack specificity for selective disease or biomarker diagnostics, and can also suffer from poor signal-to-noise and blood circulation half-life, which can limit their clinical utility. 1 Carefully designed contrast agents, and contrast agents based on nanomaterials have the potential to overcome these issues. 1,2, In this talk, I will introduce our approaches to the careful design and development of MRI contrast agents tuned for different applications. I will describe nanostructured composites capable of reporting on drug release in a unique non-invasive way, of use for the pharmacokinetic mapping of drug release towards personalised medicine. 3-5 I will also discuss recent advances in the diagnosis of chemical weapon poisoning using molecular contrast agents. References 1. P. Caravan, Chemical Society Reviews, 2006, 35, 512. 2. G.-L. Davies, I. Kramberger, J.J. Davis, Chemical Communications, 2013, 49 (84), 9704. 3. Z. Zhang, C.J.R. Wells, A.M. King, J.C. Bear, G.-L. Davies*, G.R. Williams*, Journal of Materials Chemistry B, 2020, 8, 7264- 7274 4. Z. Zhang, C. J. R. Wells, G.-L. Davies*, G.R. Williams,* International Journal of Pharmaceutics, 2021, 609, 121155 5. Z. Zhang, Y. Wang, M.M.I. Rizk, R. Liang, C.J.R. Wells, P. Gurnani, F. Zhou, G.-L. Davies,* G.R. Williams,* Materials Science and Engineering C: Materials for Biological Applications, 2022, 134, 112716
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