Construction of a novel chimera consisting of a chelator-containing Tat peptide conjugated to a morpholino antisense oligomer for technetium-99m labeling and accelerating cellular kinetics.
The attempt to target the limited copies of messenger RNA (mRNA) in vivo with radiolabeled nucleobase oligomers as antisense probes is challenging. Selecting an antisense molecule with superior properties, enhancing the cellular kinetics, and improving the radiolabeling chemistry would be the reasonable approach to accomplish this goal. The present study reports a method to construct a chimera of phosphorodiamidate morpholino nucleobase oligomer (MORF) covalently conjugated to a peptide containing a cell membrane transduction Tat peptide and an N(2)S(2) chelator for technetium-99m ((99m)Tc) radiolabeling (N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF). The radiolabeling properties and cellular kinetics of (99m)Tc-N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF were measured. As hypothesized, the preparation of (99m)Tc-N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF could be achieved by an instant one-step method with labeling efficiency greater than 95%, and the (99m)Tc-N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF showed distinct properties in cell culture from those of a control, the same MORF sequence without Tat but with mercaptoacetyltriglycine (MAG(3)) as chelator for (99m)Tc ((99m)Tc-MAG(3)-MORF). (99m)Tc-N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF achieved maximum accumulation of about 35% within 2 h, while (99m)Tc-MAG(3)-MORF showed lower and steadily increasing accumulations but of less than 1% in 24 h. These preliminary results demonstrated that the proposed chimera has properties for easy labeling, and (99m)Tc-N(2)S(2)-Tat-MORF prepared by this method possesses enhanced cellular kinetics and merits further investigation for in vivo mRNA targeting.
Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA 01655, USA. yumin.zhang@mpi.com
Yu-Min
YM
Zhang
Ching-Hsuan
CH
Tung
Jiang
J
He
Ning
N
Liu
Ivan
I
Yanachkov
Guozheng
G
Liu
Mary
M
Rusckowski
Jean-Luc
JL
Vanderheyden
D002614:Chelating Agents / Q000737:chemistry; D016373:DNA, Antisense / Q000737:chemistry* / Q000235:genetics / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D015696:Gene Products, tat / Q000737:chemistry / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D006801:Humans; D007553:Isotope Labeling / Q000379:methods; D007680:Kidney Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000378:metabolism*; D008657:Metabolic Clearance Rate; D011877:Radionuclide Imaging; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals / Q000138:chemical synthesis / Q000493:pharmacokinetics; D013667:Technetium / Q000737:chemistry / Q000493:pharmacokinetics*; D014407:Tumor Cells, Cultured
D002614:Chelating Agents; D016373:DNA, Antisense; D015696:Gene Products, tat; D019275:Radiopharmaceuticals; D013667:Technetium