Presenter: Prof. Zhihong Zhang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Topic: In vivo optical imaging of the spatio-temporal dynamic information of immunocytes during tumor immunotherapy
Time: 16:00 PM, Sep. 25th (Monday)
Location: 909-B
Abstract
Optical molecular imaging is the most promising tools for investigating the function and motility of immune cells in vivo. We established two kinds of visualization model about melanoma immunotherapy and investigated the spatio-temporal dynamic behavior and properties of immune cells in tumor microenvironment using optical imaging approaches. One model is the combined-immunotherapy of adoptive cell therapy (ACT) and cyclophosphamide (CTX) for B16 murine melanoma. Intravital microscopy data indicated that regulatory T cells formed an ‘immunosuppressive ring’ around a solid tumor. The CTX-ACT combined-treatment elicited synergistic immunoreactions in tumor areas, which included relieving the immune suppression, triggering the transient activation of endogenous tumor-infiltrating immunocytes, increasing the accumulation of adoptive cytotoxic T lymphocytes, and accelerating the infiltration of dendritic cells in tumor microenvironment. The other visualization model is the tetrameric far-red fluorescent protein (tfRFP)-elicited anti-tumor immune response. The intravital microscopy data indicated that strong and specific immune response against tfRFP-expressing B16 melanoma (tfRFP-B16) cells was occurred in the tfRFP-immunized mice after the implantation of tfRFP-B16 cells. The activated immunocytes attack and selectively eliminate tfRFP+ melanoma in vivo, which swarms of immunocytes rushed toward tumors with high motility, clusters of immunocytes form quickly, and numerous antigen-antibody complexes in the form of tfRFP+ microparticles are generated in the tumor areas and ingested by macrophages in the tumor microenvironment.
Biography
Professor Zhihong Zhang is the director of Division of Biomedical Photonics, Wuhan National Lab for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) in China. She is the awardee of National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China. Aiming at significant demand for the visualization research of tumor immunotherapy, she devoted in developing novel optical imaging methods for multi-level, multi-molecular parallel detection and targeted labeling in vivo. Her research is also focused on intravital optical molecular imaging for tumor immune, multi-functional lipid nanoparticle for tumor imaging and therapeutics, and fluorescent protein probes and multi-event synchronization imaging in living cells.
Contact: Prof. Zhuang Liu
Editor: Juan Yang