Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry - Volume 13, Issue 4, 2013

As we move towards an era of personalized medicine, molecular imaging contrast agents are likely to see an increasing presence in routine clinical practice. Magnetic resonance (MR) imaging has garnered particular interest as a platform for molecular imaging applications due its ability to monitor anatomical changes concomitant with physiologic and molecular changes. One promising new direction in the development of Read More

Potentials of hydrophilic and biocompatible ligand coated gadolinium oxide nanoparticles as multimodal imaging agents, drug carriers, and therapeutic agents are reviewed. First of all, they can be used as advanced T1 magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents because they have r1 larger than those of Gd(III)-chelates due to a high density of Gd(III) per nanoparticle. They can be further functionalized by conju Read More

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents have been used routinely for more than 20 years in order to increase sensitivity and specificity of lesion detection. MRI contrast agents (CAs) are usually categorized according to their magnetic behavior, biodistribution, and effect on the MR image. Typically, small molecular-weight gadolinium based CAs are examples of T1 agents, while magnetic nanoparticle (MNP) based CA Read More

Positron emission tomography with 89Zr can be used to follow the behaviour of therapeutic monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and other biologicals in vivo. The favourable radiophysical characteristics of 89Zr allow multiple days PET scanning after injection. For the coupling of 89Zr to proteins six desferrioxamine (DFO)-based bifunctional chelators have been described, five of which forming stable complexes in vivo. Of the method Read More

Theranostic medicine is relatively a new term that describes integration of diagnostic and therapeutic functions within the same platform of pharmaceuticals. Such a design may in principle permit the molecular diagnosis, targeted therapy, and simultaneous monitoring and treatment necessary to achieve personalized medicine for cancer. Theranostic radiopharmaceuticals, for instance, carry the properties of both dia Read More

Labeling nanoparticles with radionuclides has been widely used to form multifunctional and multivalency agents for various biomedical applications. A variety of nanostructures including inorganic, organic and lipid nanoparticles have been labeled with positron or gamma emitting radioisotopes through versatile radiochemistry in a number of disease models to track their in vivo fate, image biomarkers, and monitor treatment res Read More

At present, a limited number of strategies exist for diagnostic imaging of patients with bacterial infection. While radiolabeled probes and white blood cells provide robust solutions to detect bacteria in humans, they also give false positives in cases of sterile inflammation. With the onset of bacterial drug resistance, and a clinical trend toward reducing the prescription of antibiotics, the need for highly specific infection detect Read More

In this review, we are going to demonstrate the recent progresses in inorganic nanomaterial-based nanomedicines and their labeling for effective biological imaging. Nanomaterials which are classified according to their dimensionality, from zero- to three-dimensions can be utilized as nanomedicines including drug delivery, therapy and diagnosis. In the following section, the labeling of nanomaterials with various contra Read More

The development of imaging probes based on advances in nanotechnology aims to substantially improve specificity and sensitivity of diagnostic imaging through non-invasive and quantitative detection of specific biomolecules in living subjects. A promising class of molecular imaging probes consists of nanoparticles (NPs) functionalized with a certain targeting agent. Such targeting agents can, for instance, be selected to reco Read More

X-ray computed tomography (CT), an efficient non-invasive clinical technique, usually provides highresolution 3D structure details of tissues in early disease diagnosis. Here, we report a high-performance CT imaging platform based on a monodispersed Yb-based nanoparticulate contrast agent. The well-prepared nanoprobes presented excellent in vitro and in vivo performances in the CT imaging, very low cytotoxicity and no det Read More

The preparation of a synthetic receptor for multivalent protein binding by a directed immobilization of bifunctional ligands was demonstrated using pentameric C-reactive protein (CRP) and a thiolated phosphocholine-containing ligand on a gold surface. CRP consisting of five identical, noncovalently linked subunits and having five phosphocholinebinding sites on the same face was complexed with 12-mercaptododecylph Read More