Dendronized Iron Oxide Colloids for Imaging the Sentinel Lymph Node

Various methods have been used in medicine for more than one century to explore the lymphatic system. Radioactive colloids (RuS labelled with Tc-99m) or/and Vital Blue dye are injected around the primary tumour and detected by means of nuclear probe or visual colour inspection respectively. The simultaneous clinical use of both markers (dye and radionuclide) improves the sensitivity of detection close to 100%. Superparamagnetic iron oxides (SPIOs) are currently receiving much attention as strong T-2 weighted magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents that can be potentially used for preoperative localization of sentinel nodes, but also for peroperative detection of sentinel node using hand-held probes. In that context, we present the elaboration of dendronized iron oxide nanoparticles elaborated at the Institute of Physics and Chemistry of Materials of Strasbourg.