Fig. 5

Comparison of intravenous and intra-peritoneal delivery routes. CEM FLIM data from murine cancer model based on IGROV-1 cells injected intraperitoneally and allowed to grow into tumors over 14–21 days. Subsequently mice were treated with 5 mg kg⁻¹ doses of doxorubicin by intraperitoneal (IP) or intravenous (IV) injection. At 1.5, 3, and 24 h post dosing, repeat models underwent minor surgery to expose tumors for imaging with the CEM. a scatter plots of intensity-weighted mean H1-EGFP fluorescence lifetime against mean intensity for each for each cell nucleus from control mice (black), mice that underwent IP delivery of drug (green), and mice that underwent IV delivery of drug (red). The drug incubation times 1.5, 3, and 24 h are shown above each plot in a for doxorubicin-treated mice. b–h Histograms show the distribution of calculated population fraction of FRETing H1-EGFP with higher values indicating increasing doxorubicin binding to chromatin; i–o Histograms show intracellular doxorubicin concentration estimated according to in vitro calibration as discussed in Supplementary Note 1. Individual mice (M) are represented in each histogram by different colors. Control mice distributions are shown in b, i and treated mice distributions are shown in c–h, j–o. Biological replicates for each condition are as follows: n = 5 control mice; n = 4 IP mice at 1.5 h; n = 3 mice at IV 1.5 h; n = 5 mice at IP 3 h; n = 6 mice at IV 3 h; n = 4 mice at IP 24 h; n = 3 mice at IV 24 h