Effects of a vascular disrupting agent for cancer treatment on normal tissue evaluated by PIXE analysis using quantum dots

The effects of the vascular disrupting agent AVE8062 on tumor and normal tissue samples were investigated by particle-induced X-ray emission (PIXE) analysis using quantum dots (QDs). We investigated fibrosarcoma tumors in mice, and used kidney tissue as a control. Non-targeted QDs were used to characterize the tissue regions where blood flow is interrupted by AVE8062. We found that the concentration of the QDs in the tumors and kidneys exposed to AVE8062 was lower than that of the control group. Sub-millimeter PIXE analysis (with a beam size of 0.5 × 0.5 mm2) was used to investigate the spatial distribution of QDs in the tissue samples. We found that the QDs were accumulated in localized regions of the kidney section of the AVE8062-treated group whereas the QDs were uniformly distributed in the control kidney. This suggests that AVE8062 caused blood flow interruption not only in the tumor samples but also in the normal blood vessels in the kidneys.