A clinical trial of super-stable homogeneous lipiodol-nanoICG formulation-guided precise fluorescent laparoscopic hepatocellular carcinoma resection

BACKGROUND: Applying traditional fluorescence navigation technologies in hepatocellular carcinoma is severely restricted by high false-positive rates, variable tumor differentiation, and unstable fluorescence performance. RESULTS: In this study, a green, economical and safe nanomedicine formulation technology was developed to construct carrier-free indocyanine green nanoparticles (nanoICG) with a small uniform size and better fluorescent properties without any molecular structure changes compared to the ICG molecule. Subsequently, nanoICG dispersed into lipiodol via a super-stable homogeneous intermixed formulation technology (SHIFT&nanoICG) for transhepatic arterial embolization combined with fluorescent laparoscopic hepatectomy to eliminate the existing shortcomings. A 52-year-old liver cancer patient was recruited for the clinical trial of SHIFT&nanoICG. We demonstrate that SHIFT&nanoICG could accurately identify and mark the lesion with excellent stability, embolism, optical imaging performance, and higher tumor-to-normal tissue ratio, especially in the detection of the microsatellite lesions (0.4 × 0.3 cm), which could not be detected by preoperative imaging, to realize a complete resection of hepatocellular carcinoma under fluorescence laparoscopy in a shorter period (within 2 h) and with less intraoperative blood loss (50 mL). CONCLUSIONS: This simple and effective strategy integrates the diagnosis and treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma, and thus, it has great potential in various clinical applications. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12951-022-01467-w.