Mingqian Tan1, Xueming Wu1, Furong Ye1, Eun-Kee Jeong2, Zheng-Rong Lu1
1Department of Pharmaceutics and Pharmaceutical Chemistry, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA; 2Department of Radiology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, USA
A CLT1 peptide-targeted nanoglobular MRI contrast agent with a compact and precisely defined molecular architecture was designed and prepared via click chemistry to molecular imaging of fibrin-fibronectin complexes in tumor tissue. The peptide-targeted contrast agent was characterized by HPLC, MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry, amino acid analysis, and ICP-OES. The targeted contrast agent resulted in more significant tumor enhancement than the non-targeted agent, which shows a potential for specific cancer molecular imaging with MRI.