2. Academic Validation
  3. Bioactive manganese oxide nanoassembly as a highly sensitive magnetic resonance imaging probe for grading diagnosis of liver injury

Bioactive manganese oxide nanoassembly as a highly sensitive magnetic resonance imaging probe for grading diagnosis of liver injury

  • J Nanobiotechnology. 2026 Feb 13;24(1):235. doi: 10.1186/s12951-026-04144-4.
Na Yang # 1,  Chunli Wang # 2,  Jiaxi Wang # 1,  Jikai Xia # 3,  Qingyong Cao 3,  Henan Cao 1,  Yingying Wang 1,  Chunmin Bo 1,  Shukai Ge 1,  Chengjie Sun 4,  Zhongyuan Cai 5,  Hongyu Lin 6,  Kun Liu 7
Affiliations

Affiliations

  • 1 School of Pharmacy, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, 264003, China.
  • 2 School of Pharmacy, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, 264003, China. [email protected].
  • 3 Department of Radiology, Yantai Affiliated Hospital of Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, 264100, China.
  • 4 Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Westlake University, Hangzhou, 310030, China.
  • 5 Department of Radiology, Huaxi MR Research Center (HMRRC), Institution of Radiology and Medical Imaging, West China Hospital, Sichuan University, Chengdu, 610041, China. [email protected].
  • 6 State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces, The MOE Laboratory of Spectrochemical Analysis & Instrumentation, The Key Laboratory for Chemical Biology of Fujian Province, Department of Chemical Biology, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Xiamen University, Xiamen, 361005, China. [email protected].
  • 7 School of Pharmacy, Binzhou Medical University, Yantai, 264003, China. [email protected].
  • # Contributed equally.
PMID: 41689006 DOI: 10.1186/s12951-026-04144-4
Abstract

Real-time and accurate detection of drug-induced liver injury is critical for early intervention and treatment, yet clinically applicable visualization methods remain scarce. Based on the difference in glutathione (GSH) content between the normal liver and the livers with different-grade injury, we report a GSH-activated T1-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) nanoprobe (C-MnO), which can be used for non-invasive real-time in vivo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of the consumption of GSH in the liver, thereby being applied for the graded diagnosis of liver injury. Due to the presence of abundant disulfide bonds in C-MnO, the T1 MRI signal around it remained "quenched" until encountering GSH. When C-MnO enters the body and is efficiently absorbed by the liver, it will disassemble and degrade under the action of GSH, thereby activating the T1 MRI signal. Therefore, this nanoprobe provides an effective visual method for capturing the changes in GSH content during different degrees of liver damages at an early stage, which is beneficial for the graded diagnosis and precision treatment of drug-induced liver injury. Comprehensive in vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate that C-MnO, as a GSH-activated T1 MRI nanoprobe, enables real-time monitoring and graded diagnosis of drug-induced liver injury, effectively addressing current clinical limitations in the detection of liver injury.

Keywords

Glutathione; Grading diagnosis; Liver injury; Magnetic resonance imaging; Manganese oxide nanoparticles.

Figures
Products