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Brian T Crouch

Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering
Biomedical Engineering
Room 1427 Fciemas, Box 90281, Durham, NC 27708
140 Science Drive, 373 Gross Hall, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Impact of Injection-Based Delivery Parameters on Local Distribution Volume of Ethyl-Cellulose Ethanol Gel in Tissue and Tissue Mimicking Phantoms.

Journal Article IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering · May 2024 ObjectiveLocal drug delivery aims to minimize systemic toxicity by preventing off-target effects; however, injection parameters influencing depot formation of injectable gels have yet to be thoroughly studied. We explored the effects of needle cha ... Full text Cite

Optical imaging reveals chemotherapy-induced metabolic reprogramming of residual disease and recurrence.

Journal Article Sci Adv · April 5, 2024 Fewer than 20% of triple-negative breast cancer patients experience long-term responses to mainstay chemotherapy. Resistant tumor subpopulations use alternative metabolic pathways to escape therapy, survive, and eventually recur. Here, we show in vivo, lon ... Full text Link to item Cite

Determining the Relationship between Delivery Parameters and Ablation Distribution for Novel Gel Ethanol Percutaneous Therapy in Ex Vivo Swine Liver.

Journal Article Polymers (Basel) · April 5, 2024 Ethyl cellulose-ethanol (ECE) is emerging as a promising formulation for ablative injections, with more controllable injection distributions than those from traditional liquid ethanol. This study evaluates the influence of salient injection parameters on f ... Full text Link to item Cite

In Vivo Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Ethyl Cellulose-Ethanol Tissue Ablation in a Swine Cervix Model.

Journal Article Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · October 2023 Current therapies for treating cervical dysplasia are often inaccessible in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlighting the need for novel low-cost therapies that can be delivered at the point of care. Ethanol ablation is a low-cost therapy desig ... Full text Cite

Data from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <div>Abstract<p>With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following t ... Full text Cite

Supplementary figures and captions 1-5 from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <p>Supplementary Figure 1: 3D Rendering of mammosphere stained with 2-NBDG and TMRE. Supplementary Figure 2: Western blot confirms loss of Her2 expression following withdrawal of Dox in media conditions. Supplementary Figure 3: Quantification ... Full text Cite

Supplementary figures and captions 1-5 from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <p>Supplementary Figure 1: 3D Rendering of mammosphere stained with 2-NBDG and TMRE. Supplementary Figure 2: Western blot confirms loss of Her2 expression following withdrawal of Dox in media conditions. Supplementary Figure 3: Quantification ... Full text Cite

Data from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <div>Abstract<p>With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following t ... Full text Cite

Understanding the sources of errors in ex vivo Hsp90 molecular imaging for rapid-on-site breast cancer diagnosis.

Journal Article Biomed Opt Express · April 1, 2021 Overexpression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) on the surface of breast cancer cells makes it an attractive molecular biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis. Before a ubiquitous diagnostic method can be established, an understanding of the systematic error ... Full text Link to item Cite

Polymer-assisted intratumoral delivery of ethanol: Preclinical investigation of safety and efficacy in a murine breast cancer model.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2021 Focal tumor ablation with ethanol could provide benefits in low-resource settings because of its low overall cost, minimal imaging technology requirements, and acceptable clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, ethanol ablation is not commonly utilized because o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Polymer-assisted intratumoral delivery of ethanol: Preclinical investigation of safety and efficacy in a murine breast cancer model

Journal Article · 2020 Focal tumor ablation with ethanol could provide benefits in low-resource settings because of its low overall cost, minimal imaging technology requirements, and acceptable clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, ethanol ablation is not commonly utilized because o ... Full text Cite

In vivo optical metabolic imaging of long-chain fatty acid uptake in orthotopic models of triple negative breast cancer

Journal Article · 2020 Targeting a tumor’s metabolic dependencies is a clinically actionable therapeutic approach, but identifying subtypes of tumors likely to respond remains difficult. The use of lipids as a nutrient source is of particular importance, especially in breast can ... Full text Cite

Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes.

Journal Article Mol Cancer Res · July 2019 With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following therapy. To mitigate this, cellular a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Simultaneous in vivo optical quantification of key metabolic and vascular endpoints reveals tumor metabolic diversity in murine breast tumor models.

Journal Article J Biophotonics · April 2019 Therapeutically exploiting vascular and metabolic endpoints becomes critical to translational cancer studies because altered vascularity and deregulated metabolism are two important cancer hallmarks. The metabolic and vascular phenotypes of three sibling b ... Full text Link to item Cite

Exploiting heat shock protein expression to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool for breast cancer.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 5, 2019 Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in breast cancer provides an exciting opportunity to develop rapid diagnostic tests at the point-of-care setting. Hsp90 has previously been shown to have elevated expression levels a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Near-simultaneous quantification of glucose uptake, mitochondrial membrane potential, and vascular parameters in murine flank tumors using quantitative diffuse reflectance and fluorescence spectroscopy.

Journal Article Biomed Opt Express · July 1, 2018 The shifting metabolic landscape of aggressive tumors, with fluctuating oxygenation conditions and temporal changes in glycolysis and mitochondrial metabolism, is a critical phenomenon to study in order to understand negative treatment outcomes. Recently, ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metaboloptics: Visualization of the tumor functional landscape via metabolic and vascular imaging.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 8, 2018 Many cancers adeptly modulate metabolism to thrive in fluctuating oxygen conditions; however, current tools fail to image metabolic and vascular endpoints at spatial resolutions needed to visualize these adaptations in vivo. We demonstrate a high-resolutio ... Full text Link to item Cite

Optimizing fluorescently-tethered Hsp90 inhibitor dose for maximal specific uptake by breast tumors

Conference Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE · January 1, 2018 Despite improvements in surgical resection, 20-40% of patients undergoing breast conserving surgery require at least one additional re-excision. Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), a chaperone protein involved in seve ... Full text Cite

Leveraging ectopic Hsp90 expression to assay the presence of tumor cells and aggressive tumor phenotypes in breast specimens.

Journal Article Sci Rep · December 13, 2017 Hsp90 has been studied extensively as a therapeutic target in breast cancer in pre-clinical and clinical trials, demonstrating a variety of roles in metastatic progression. The evidence to date suggests a compelling opportunity to leverage attributes of Hs ... Full text Link to item Cite

Near-simultaneous intravital microscopy of glucose uptake and mitochondrial membrane potential, key endpoints that reflect major metabolic axes in cancer.

Journal Article Sci Rep · October 23, 2017 While the demand for metabolic imaging has increased in recent years, simultaneous in vivo measurement of multiple metabolic endpoints remains challenging. Here we report on a novel technique that provides in vivo high-resolution simultaneous imaging of gl ... Full text Link to item Cite

Impact of Injection-Based Delivery Parameters on Local Distribution Volume of Ethyl-Cellulose Ethanol Gel in Tissue and Tissue Mimicking Phantoms.

Journal Article IEEE transactions on bio-medical engineering · May 2024 ObjectiveLocal drug delivery aims to minimize systemic toxicity by preventing off-target effects; however, injection parameters influencing depot formation of injectable gels have yet to be thoroughly studied. We explored the effects of needle cha ... Full text Cite

Optical imaging reveals chemotherapy-induced metabolic reprogramming of residual disease and recurrence.

Journal Article Sci Adv · April 5, 2024 Fewer than 20% of triple-negative breast cancer patients experience long-term responses to mainstay chemotherapy. Resistant tumor subpopulations use alternative metabolic pathways to escape therapy, survive, and eventually recur. Here, we show in vivo, lon ... Full text Link to item Cite

Determining the Relationship between Delivery Parameters and Ablation Distribution for Novel Gel Ethanol Percutaneous Therapy in Ex Vivo Swine Liver.

Journal Article Polymers (Basel) · April 5, 2024 Ethyl cellulose-ethanol (ECE) is emerging as a promising formulation for ablative injections, with more controllable injection distributions than those from traditional liquid ethanol. This study evaluates the influence of salient injection parameters on f ... Full text Link to item Cite

In Vivo Evaluation of Safety and Efficacy of Ethyl Cellulose-Ethanol Tissue Ablation in a Swine Cervix Model.

Journal Article Bioengineering (Basel, Switzerland) · October 2023 Current therapies for treating cervical dysplasia are often inaccessible in low and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlighting the need for novel low-cost therapies that can be delivered at the point of care. Ethanol ablation is a low-cost therapy desig ... Full text Cite

Data from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <div>Abstract<p>With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following t ... Full text Cite

Supplementary figures and captions 1-5 from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <p>Supplementary Figure 1: 3D Rendering of mammosphere stained with 2-NBDG and TMRE. Supplementary Figure 2: Western blot confirms loss of Her2 expression following withdrawal of Dox in media conditions. Supplementary Figure 3: Quantification ... Full text Cite

Supplementary figures and captions 1-5 from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <p>Supplementary Figure 1: 3D Rendering of mammosphere stained with 2-NBDG and TMRE. Supplementary Figure 2: Western blot confirms loss of Her2 expression following withdrawal of Dox in media conditions. Supplementary Figure 3: Quantification ... Full text Cite

Data from Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes

Other · April 3, 2023 <div>Abstract<p>With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following t ... Full text Cite

Understanding the sources of errors in ex vivo Hsp90 molecular imaging for rapid-on-site breast cancer diagnosis.

Journal Article Biomed Opt Express · April 1, 2021 Overexpression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) on the surface of breast cancer cells makes it an attractive molecular biomarker for breast cancer diagnosis. Before a ubiquitous diagnostic method can be established, an understanding of the systematic error ... Full text Link to item Cite

Polymer-assisted intratumoral delivery of ethanol: Preclinical investigation of safety and efficacy in a murine breast cancer model.

Journal Article PLoS One · 2021 Focal tumor ablation with ethanol could provide benefits in low-resource settings because of its low overall cost, minimal imaging technology requirements, and acceptable clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, ethanol ablation is not commonly utilized because o ... Full text Link to item Cite

Polymer-assisted intratumoral delivery of ethanol: Preclinical investigation of safety and efficacy in a murine breast cancer model

Journal Article · 2020 Focal tumor ablation with ethanol could provide benefits in low-resource settings because of its low overall cost, minimal imaging technology requirements, and acceptable clinical outcomes. Unfortunately, ethanol ablation is not commonly utilized because o ... Full text Cite

In vivo optical metabolic imaging of long-chain fatty acid uptake in orthotopic models of triple negative breast cancer

Journal Article · 2020 Targeting a tumor’s metabolic dependencies is a clinically actionable therapeutic approach, but identifying subtypes of tumors likely to respond remains difficult. The use of lipids as a nutrient source is of particular importance, especially in breast can ... Full text Cite

Optical Imaging of Glucose Uptake and Mitochondrial Membrane Potential to Characterize Her2 Breast Tumor Metabolic Phenotypes.

Journal Article Mol Cancer Res · July 2019 With the large number of women diagnosed and treated for breast cancer each year, the importance of studying recurrence has become evident due to most deaths from breast cancer resulting from tumor recurrence following therapy. To mitigate this, cellular a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Simultaneous in vivo optical quantification of key metabolic and vascular endpoints reveals tumor metabolic diversity in murine breast tumor models.

Journal Article J Biophotonics · April 2019 Therapeutically exploiting vascular and metabolic endpoints becomes critical to translational cancer studies because altered vascularity and deregulated metabolism are two important cancer hallmarks. The metabolic and vascular phenotypes of three sibling b ... Full text Link to item Cite

Exploiting heat shock protein expression to develop a non-invasive diagnostic tool for breast cancer.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 5, 2019 Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) in breast cancer provides an exciting opportunity to develop rapid diagnostic tests at the point-of-care setting. Hsp90 has previously been shown to have elevated expression levels a ... Full text Link to item Cite

Near-simultaneous quantification of glucose uptake, mitochondrial membrane potential, and vascular parameters in murine flank tumors using quantitative diffuse reflectance and fluorescence spectroscopy.

Journal Article Biomed Opt Express · July 1, 2018 The shifting metabolic landscape of aggressive tumors, with fluctuating oxygenation conditions and temporal changes in glycolysis and mitochondrial metabolism, is a critical phenomenon to study in order to understand negative treatment outcomes. Recently, ... Full text Link to item Cite

Metaboloptics: Visualization of the tumor functional landscape via metabolic and vascular imaging.

Journal Article Sci Rep · March 8, 2018 Many cancers adeptly modulate metabolism to thrive in fluctuating oxygen conditions; however, current tools fail to image metabolic and vascular endpoints at spatial resolutions needed to visualize these adaptations in vivo. We demonstrate a high-resolutio ... Full text Link to item Cite

Optimizing fluorescently-tethered Hsp90 inhibitor dose for maximal specific uptake by breast tumors

Conference Progress in Biomedical Optics and Imaging - Proceedings of SPIE · January 1, 2018 Despite improvements in surgical resection, 20-40% of patients undergoing breast conserving surgery require at least one additional re-excision. Leveraging the unique surface expression of heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90), a chaperone protein involved in seve ... Full text Cite

Leveraging ectopic Hsp90 expression to assay the presence of tumor cells and aggressive tumor phenotypes in breast specimens.

Journal Article Sci Rep · December 13, 2017 Hsp90 has been studied extensively as a therapeutic target in breast cancer in pre-clinical and clinical trials, demonstrating a variety of roles in metastatic progression. The evidence to date suggests a compelling opportunity to leverage attributes of Hs ... Full text Link to item Cite

Near-simultaneous intravital microscopy of glucose uptake and mitochondrial membrane potential, key endpoints that reflect major metabolic axes in cancer.

Journal Article Sci Rep · October 23, 2017 While the demand for metabolic imaging has increased in recent years, simultaneous in vivo measurement of multiple metabolic endpoints remains challenging. Here we report on a novel technique that provides in vivo high-resolution simultaneous imaging of gl ... Full text Link to item Cite

Imaging of 2-NBDG and TMRE reveals glucose uptake and mitochondrial membrane potential in dorsal window chamber models

Conference Optics InfoBase Conference Papers · January 1, 2017 For the first time, we performed simultaneous in vivo microscopic imaging of 2-NBDG and TMRE in a preclinical model, to successfully capture glucose and mitochondrial membrane potential on the same tissue site at one time. ... Full text Cite