US Patent Issued to The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University on Nov. 4 for "Protease-activated contrast agents for in vivo imaging" (American, Dutch Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Nov. 6 -- United States Patent no. 12,459,972, issued on Nov. 4, was assigned to The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University (Stanford, Calif.).

"Protease-activated contrast agents for in vivo imaging" was invented by Matthew S. Bogyo (Redwood City, Calif.), Martijn Verdoes (Nijmegen, Netherlands), Leslie Ofori (Jupiter, Fla.) and Nimali P. Withana (Menlo Park, Calif.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Compounds useful as contrast agents in image-guided surgery are provided. The compounds comprise a latent cationic lysosomotropic fragment that is detectable upon cleavage by lysosomal proteases within treated tissues, particularly within tumors and other disease...