Nanodiamond enhances MRI

‘The results are a leap and not a small one - it is a game-changing event for sensitivity,’ said Thomas J Meade, the Eileen Foell Professor in Cancer Research in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and the Feinberg School of Medicine. ‘The complex is far more sensitive than anything else I’ve seen.’

Meade led the study with Dean Ho, assistant professor of biomedical engineering and mechanical engineering in the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science.

Ho has already demonstrated that the nanodiamonds have excellent biocompatibility and can be used for efficient drug delivery. This new work paves the way for the clinical use of nanodiamonds to deliver therapeutics and remotely track the activity and location of the drugs.

The study, to the best of the researchers’ knowledge, is the first published report of nanodiamonds being imaged by MRI technology. The ability to image nanodiamonds in vivo would be useful in biological studies where long-term cellular fate mapping is critical, such as tracking beta islet cells or tracking stem cells.