Targeting near-infrared fluorescent imaging has facilitated the precise diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), and cellular mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (c-Met) has been reported as a highly expressed marker in HCC tissues compared with normal liver tissues. Thus, we intend to use the c-Met targeted near-infrared fluorescent probe SHRmAb-IR800 for imaging in HCC xenograft models.

The expression information of c-Met mRNA and protein was obtained and analyzed from TCGA and HPA databases, respectively. The expression of c-Met protein in HCC cell lines was analyzed by Western Blot. Flow cytometry and confocal imaging experiments were used to evaluate the specific binding ability of SHRmAb-IR800 with HCC cells in vitro. HCC subcutaneous xenograft models were constructed to perform in vivo imaging analysis and quantify the imaging tumor background ratio (TBR) of SHRmAb-IR800.

The data extracted and analyzed from TCGA and HPA showed c-Met mRNA and protein were highly expressed in HCC tissues. Western Blot analysis also displayed that HCC cell lines expressed c-Met protein. Flow cytometry and confocal imaging were performed to verify the high specificity of SHRmAb-IR800 toward human HCC cell lines. Then the in vivo imaging of the probe in HCC xenograft models showed that the aggregation of SHRmAb-IR800 in tumor was higher than the control probe (P < 0.05). Moreover, the tumor-to-background ratio (TBR) of the probe in 96 h reached to 2.01 ± 0.18.

Our study demonstrated that c-Met-targeted probe had highly specific binding ability to HCC cells and tissues, which could be used to detect the HCC and have profound application potential in surgical navigation of HCC.