Investigation of Nanoparticles in Zebrafish using Particle Tracking Velocimetry.

Abstract

Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide where it is the second leading cause of death. To improve safety and efficacy of anti-cancer drugs with less side effects, nanoparticles (NPs) have been studied heavily. The concept of selectively detecting and destroying cancer cells with NPs is very exciting, but from the past 10 years only 0.7\% (median) of the administered NP dose is found to be delivered to a solid tumour. To best be able to study the flow and distribution of fluorescent NPs in vivo, the zebrafish model has become very popular as it is optically transparent for easy imaging. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a non-intrusive optical measurement method, which gives velocity fields resolved in both time and space. Using PIV as the backbone a Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) code was developed to track NPs varying in scale from 100 nm to 1200 nm. The mean and STD percentage of nanoparticle trajectories that are likely to end up in the vein margin within the next frame decreases with nanoparticle size (800 nm, 400 nm, 200 nm). Distribution of nanoparticle trajectories throughout the vein in relation to different nanoparticle sizes needs more data to determine anything conclusively.

Cancer is a major public health problem worldwide where it is the second leading cause of death. To improve safety and efficacy of anti-cancer drugs with less side effects, nanoparticles (NPs) have been studied heavily. The concept of selectively detecting and destroying cancer cells with NPs is very exciting, but from the past 10 years only 0.7\% (median) of the administered NP dose is found to be delivered to a solid tumour. To best be able to study the flow and distribution of fluorescent NPs in vivo, the zebrafish model has become very popular as it is optically transparent for easy imaging. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a non-intrusive optical measurement method, which gives velocity fields resolved in both time and space. Using PIV as the backbone a Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) code was developed to track NPs varying in scale from 100 nm to 1200 nm. The mean and STD percentage of nanoparticle trajectories that are likely to end up in the vein margin within the next frame decreases with nanoparticle size (800 nm, 400 nm, 200 nm). Distribution of nanoparticle trajectories throughout the vein in relation to different nanoparticle sizes needs more data to determine anything conclusively.