{"doi":"10.1038/s41467-024-49409-4","title":"A probe for NIR-II imaging and multimodal analysis of early Alzheimer’s disease by targeting CTGF","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>To date, earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still challenging. Recent studies revealed the elevated expression of connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) in AD brain is an upstream regulator of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaque, thus CTGF could be an earlier diagnostic biomarker of AD than Aβ plaque. Herein, we develop a peptide-coated gold nanocluster that specifically targets CTGF with high affinity (KD ~ 21.9 nM). The probe can well penetrate the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) of APP/PS1 transgenic mice at early-stage (earlier than 3-month-old) in vivo, allowing non-invasive NIR-II imaging of CTGF when there is no appearance of Aβ plaque deposition. Notably, this probe can also be applied to measuring CTGF on postmortem brain sections by multimodal analysis, including fluorescence imaging, peroxidase-like chromogenic imaging, and ICP-MS quantitation, which enables distinguishment between the brains of AD patients and healthy people. This probe possesses great potential for precise diagnosis of earlier AD before Aβ plaque formation.</jats:p>","journal":"Nature Communications","year":2024,"id":643839,"datarank":0.5709993734655481,"base_score":3.8066624897703196,"endowment":3.8066624897703196,"self_citation_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.5709993734655481,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":44,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":null,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":null,"fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":1675471,"name":"Cong Meng","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1231134,"name":"Yuying Li","orcid":"0000-0001-5791-3132","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":696825,"name":"Jinling Yuan","orcid":"0009-0001-4629-8960","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":264392,"name":"Xiaojun Ren","orcid":"0000-0002-3931-7625","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1457390,"name":"Liang Gao","orcid":"0000-0002-9337-345X","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1675472,"name":"Dongdong Su","orcid":null,"position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1456565,"name":"Kai Cao","orcid":"0000-0003-3647-5190","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1648094,"name":"Mengchao Cui","orcid":"0000-0002-3488-7864","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":480790,"name":"Qing Yuan","orcid":"0000-0001-9851-0284","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1675473,"name":"Xueyun Gao","orcid":"0000-0002-2267-9945","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":1675470,"name":"Cao Lu","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":false}],"reference_count":0,"raw_metadata":{"has_enrichment":true,"resolved":true,"title":"A probe for NIR-II imaging and multimodal analysis of early Alzheimer’s disease by targeting CTGF","abstract":"<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>To date, earlier diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is still challenging. Recent studies revealed the elevated expression of connective tissue growth factor (CTGF) in AD brain is an upstream regulator of amyloid-beta (Aβ) plaque, thus CTGF could be an earlier diagnostic biomarker of AD than Aβ plaque. Herein, we develop a peptide-coated gold nanocluster that specifically targets CTGF with high affinity (KD ~ 21.9 nM). The probe can well penetrate the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) of APP/PS1 transgenic mice at early-stage (earlier than 3-month-old) in vivo, allowing non-invasive NIR-II imaging of CTGF when there is no appearance of Aβ plaque deposition. Notably, this probe can also be applied to measuring CTGF on postmortem brain sections by multimodal analysis, including fluorescence imaging, peroxidase-like chromogenic imaging, and ICP-MS quantitation, which enables distinguishment between the brains of AD patients and healthy people. This probe possesses great potential for precise diagnosis of earlier AD before Aβ plaque formation.</jats:p>","is_dataset_classified":null,"base_score":3.7376696182833684,"endowment":3.7376696182833684,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"views":0,"has_version_chain":false,"is_dataset":false,"is_oa":false,"pmid":"38866763","pmcid":"PMC11169542","openalex_id":"https://openalex.org/W4399593848","authors":[],"funders":[],"total_grants":0,"fwci":3.6332,"citation_percentile":0.96362592,"influential_citations":0,"citation_trend":[{"year":2024,"count":6},{"year":2025,"count":21},{"year":2026,"count":14}],"oa_status":"gold","license":"cc-by","oa_locations":[{"url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49409-4.pdf","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49409-4.pdf","host_type":"GOLD"},{"url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49409-4.pdf","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-49409-4","host_type":"publisher"},{"url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-49409-4","host_type":"journal"},{"url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38866763","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/11169542","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://doaj.org/article/84c90d6c83f3430d926b57c7e80ad011","host_type":"repository"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11169542","host_type":"Europe_PMC"},{"url":"https://europepmc.org/articles/PMC11169542?pdf=render","host_type":"Europe_PMC"}],"fields_of_study":["Nanocluster Synthesis and Applications","Alzheimer's disease research and treatments","Mercury impact and mitigation studies","Medicine"],"mesh_terms":["Alzheimer Disease","Animals","Blood-Brain Barrier","Brain","Disease Models, Animal","Female","Gold","Humans","Male","Mice, Transgenic","Biomarkers","Amyloid beta-Peptides","Mice","Metal Nanoparticles","Connective Tissue Growth Factor","Plaque, Amyloid","Optical Imaging","Multimodal Imaging"],"keywords":["CTGF","Pathology","Biomarker","Connective tissue","Fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy","In vivo","Genetically modified mouse","Medicine","Growth factor","Chemistry","Transgene","Biology","Fluorescence","Biochemistry","Internal medicine","Receptor","Genetics"],"sdg_mappings":[{"sdg_number":0,"sdg_label":"Good health and well-being"}],"linked_datasets":[],"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"database_accessions":[{"name":"doi"}],"source":"live","citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-08-08T19:13:39.170873Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}