Multimerization of cRGD Peptides by Click Chemistry: Synthetic Strategies,Chemical Limitations,and Influence on Biological Properties |
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Authors: | Dr. Carmen Wängler Dr. Simone Maschauer Dr. Olaf Prante Dipl.‐Ing. Martin Schäfer Prof. Dr. Ralf Schirrmacher Prof. Dr. Peter Bartenstein Prof. Dr. Michael Eisenhut Dr. Björn Wängler |
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Affiliation: | 1. McConnell Brain Imaging Centre, Montreal Neurological Institute, McGill University, 3801 University Street, Montreal, H3A 2B4 QC (Canada);2. University Hospital Munich, Department of Nuclear Medicine, Ludwig Maximilians‐University Munich, Marchioninistra?e 15, 81377 Munich (Germany);3. Friedrich‐Alexander University, Clinic of Nuclear Medicine, Laboratory of Molecular Imaging, Schwabachanlage 6, 91054 Erlangen (Germany);4. German Cancer Research Center, Department of Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, 69120 Heidelberg (Germany) |
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Abstract: | Integrin ανβ3 is overexpressed on endothelial cells of growing vessels as well as on several tumor types, and so integrin‐binding radiolabeled cyclic RGD pentapeptides have attracted increasing interest for in vivo imaging of ανβ3 integrin expression by positron emission tomography (PET). Of the cRGD derivatives available for imaging applications, systems comprising multiple cRGD moieties have recently been shown to exhibit highly favorable properties in relation to monomers. To assess the synthetic limits of the cRGD‐multimerization approach and thus the maximum multimer size achievable by using different efficient conjugation reactions, we prepared a variety of multimers that were further investigated in vitro with regard to their avidities to integrin ανβ3. The synthesized peptide multimers containing increasing numbers of cRGD moieties on PAMAM dendrimer scaffolds were prepared by different click chemistry coupling strategies. A cRGD hexadecimer was the largest construct that could be synthesized under optimized reaction conditions, thus identifying the current synthetic limitations for cRGD multimerization. The obtained multimeric systems were conjugated to a new DOTA‐based chelator developed for the derivatization of sterically demanding structures and successfully labeled with 68Ga for a potential in vivo application. The evaluated multimers showed very high avidities—increasing with the number of cRGD moieties—in in vitro studies on immobilized ανβ3 integrin and U87MG cells, of up to 131‐ and 124‐fold, respectively, relative to the underivatized monomer. |
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Keywords: | click chemistry cRGD dendrimers imaging agents multimerization |
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