Xin Liu1, Zhong-Xing Jiang2, Yihua Bruce Yu2, Eun-Kee Jeong3
1Physics, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 2Bioengineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA; 3Radiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
Fluorine-19 is a promising reporter for drug delivery research because of its high NMR sensitivity, 100% natural abundance and minimal background interference from human body. However, MR imaging of most fluorinated compounds suffers from low signal intensity caused by low quantity, long T1, and multiple chemical shifts, and low hydrophilicity causes long retention time which might increase the toxicity. To address these issues, we present a 19F based multifunctional drug delivery vehicle 19Fluorine Imaging Tracer (19FIT). Our 19FIT contains 27 19F nuclei in each molecule with identical chemical shift. Its relatively short T1 (253.325.0 ms in solution and ~370 ms in vivo at 3 T) of our compound allows for increased signal averages in unit scan time and its short retention time reduce the toxicity risk.