Maxime Gauberti Mimicking white blood cells to improve imaging diagnosis

Detecting the beginnings of the immune response 

When we are affected by an autoimmune pathology or cancer, our body naturally triggers an immune response designed to combat the disease. Identifying the first signs of this response, such as the attachment of white blood cells to the inner lining of blood vessels, could make it possible to establish an early diagnosis of these pathologies. This same approach could also help to monitor a patient's response to a given treatment. 

In order to observe the body's immune response in minute detail, one of the avenues being explored is the development of ultrasensitive molecular imaging. This would make it possible to visualize normal and pathological molecular mechanisms inside blood vessels. For the time being, non-invasive imaging methods are not yet able to capture the full complexity of these mechanisms in the vascular system, because they are not sufficiently sensitive.

A paradigm shift to improve medical imaging performance 

To achieve resolution on a molecular scale, contrast agents need to be injected into the body prior to the imaging procedure. The particles carrying these agents need to be between ten and fifty nanometres in size, equivalent to the size of certain viruses, in order to attach to the inner wall of the blood vessels, before the immune system destroys them like any foreign body. Maxime Gauberti is proposing a paradigm shift. He has created so-called "submicroscopic" particles with a diameter twenty to fifty times greater, a format similar to that of white blood cells. 

These new particules have a number of advantages. They are capable of transporting up to 64,000 times more contrast products than a nano-sized particle, thereby improving the sensitivity of imaging techniques. What's more, once they have entered the bloodstream, they interact more easily with blood vessel walls, increasing their chances of binding. Finally, they have the advantage of being too large to pass through the vessel wall. This means that they cannot accumulate in unwanted areas of the body, which tends to increase the specificity of the imaging.

Testing the effectiveness of promising particles in vivo 

With Impulscience^®, Maxime Gauberti's team plans to create four types of submicrometric particles that can be used to map the immune response within a living organism. Each particle will be made up of a different material adapted to a given imaging technique. 

The aim of an initial series of investigations will be to optimize the synthesis and targeting of the different particles. These devices will then be tested in mouse models expressing various pathological situations. Other models will be used to assess whether these particles can help predict the body's response to immunotherapy in cancer or autoimmune disease. By increasing our knowledge of the development and mode of action of these large particles, Maxime Gauberti's work should help to improve molecular imaging by providing new tools for diagnosing human diseases.