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Reporting its work in the journal Oncology ("Pilot Study Evaluating Use of Lymphotrophic Nanoparticle-Enhanced Magnetic Resonance Imaging for Assessing Lymph Nodes in Renal Cell Cancer"), a team of researchers headed by Alexander Guimaraes, M.D., Ph.D., Mukesh Harisinghani, M.D., and Ralph Weissleder, M.D., who is the principal investigator of the MIT-Harvard Center for Cancer Nanotechnology Excellence, showed that dextran-coated iron oxide administered to nine patients with kidney tumors could clearly identify lymph node metastases and distinguish them from benign lesions using magnetic resonance (MR) imaging. These results were confirmed by traditional histopathology techniques, revealing one false-positive among the MR imaging results. MR imaging of lymph nodes did not miss detecting any metastases later identified by histopathology. The researchers conclude that these studies warrant a larger, prospective clinical trial to prove that iron oxide nanoparticles can serve as a noninvasive diagnostic for metastatic disease.
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