An unexpected discovery surprised a scientist on the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart: nanometer-sized diamond particles, which were intended for a totally different purpose, shone brightly in a magnetic resonance imaging experiment — much brighter than the actual contrast agent, the heavy metal gadolinium. Could diamond dust — along with its use in drug delivery to treat tumor cells — in the future develop into a novel contrast agent used for MRI? The research team now published their discovery in Advanced Materials.
Among the world’s best discoveries happened by accident. While the invention of diamond dust’s potential as a future MRI contrast agent may never be considered a turning point in science history, its signal-enhancing properties are nevertheless an unexpected finding which can open-up latest possibilities: Diamond dust glows brightly even after days of being injected. Does that mean it could perhaps in the future develop into a substitute for the widely used contrast agent gadolinium?
This heavy metal is utilized in clinics to detect tumors, inflammation, or vascular abnormalities for greater than 30 years. It enhances the brightness of the image of affected areas. Nevertheless, when injected right into a patient’s bloodstream, gadolinium travels not only to tumor tissue but in addition to surrounding healthy tissue. It’s retained within the brain and kidneys, persisting months to years after the last administration. The long-term effects on the patient are usually not yet known. Gadolinium also causes quite a lot of other unintended effects. The seek for an alternate has been underway for years.
Could diamond dust, a carbon-based material, develop into a well-tolerable alternative due to an unexpected discovery made in a laboratory on the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart?
Dr. Jelena Lazovic Zinnanti was working on an experiment using nanometer-sized diamond particles for a completely different purpose. The research scientist, who heads the Central Scientific Facility Medical Systems at MPI-IS, was surprised when she put the three to five nanometer particles into tiny drug-delivery capsules made from gelatin. She wanted these capsules to rupture when exposed to heat. She assumed that diamond dust, with its high heat capability, could help.
“I had intended to make use of the dust only to heat up the drug carrying capsules,” Jelena recollects. “I used gadolinium to trace the dust particles’ position. I intended to learn if the capsules with diamonds inside would heat up higher. While performing preliminary tests, I got frustrated, because gadolinium would leak out of the gelatin — just because it leaks out of the bloodstream into the tissue of a patient. I made a decision to go away gadolinium out. After I took MRI images just a few days later, to my surprise, the capsules were still vivid. Wow, that is interesting, I believed! The diamond dust appeared to have higher signal enhancing properties than gadolinium. I hadn’t expected that.”
Jelena took these findings further by injecting the diamond dust into live chicken embryos. She discovered that while gadolinium diffuses all over the place, the diamond nanoparticles stayed within the blood vessels, didn’t leak out and later shone brightly within the MRI, just as they’d done within the gelatin capsules. While other scientists had published papers showing how they used diamond particles attached to gadolinium for magnetic resonance imaging, nobody had ever shown that diamond dust itself may very well be a contrast agent.
Two years later, Jelena became the lead creator of a paper now published in Advanced Materials.
“Why the diamond dust shines vivid in our MRI still stays a mystery to us,” says Jelena, who worked with Prof. Metin Sitti and researchers from the Physical Intelligence Department at MPI-IS and with Dr. Eberhard Goering from the MPI-IS’ neighboring institute, the MPI for Solid State Research. She will be able to only assume the explanation for the dust’s magnetic properties: “I believe the tiny particles have carbons which can be barely paramagnetic. The particles could have a defect of their crystal lattice, making them barely magnetic. That is why they behave like a T1 contrast agent resembling gadolinium. Moreover, we do not know whether diamond dust could potentially be toxic, something that should be fastidiously examined in the longer term.”
If diamond dust is found to be protected and well tolerated by patients, Jelena believes it has the potential to develop into a brand new contrast agent option for future MRI scans, where it might be deposited in tissue with abnormal vasculature, resembling tumors, but not in healthy tissue.
