Shruti kanakia1,
Jimmy Toussaint1, Sayan Mullick Chowdhury1, Tanuf
Tembulkar1, Terry Button2, Kenneth Shroyer3,
William Moore2, Balaji Sitharaman1
1Biomedical
Engineering, Stony Brook Univeristy, Stony Brook, NY, United States; 2Radiology,
Stony Brook Univeristy, Stony Brook, NY, United States; 3Pathology,
Stony Brook Univeristy, Stony Brook, NY, United States
We report pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo small animal studies of a novel graphene-based MRI CA. The formulation called GNP-Dex consists of monodisperse graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs; small disc-shaped graphene nanoparticles with diameter ~40 nm and thickness ~3-4 nm), intercalated with manganese Mn2+ ions, and water-solubilized with dextran. The results show that the GNP-Dex formulation is safe (LD50 > 500 mg/kg). At potential therapeutic doses (≤100 mg/kg), they show no nephrotoxicity and are more efficacious than clinical MRI CAs Magnevist and Ablavar. The results indicate that GNP-Dex show potential for development as high performance clinical T1 MRI CA.