Molecules, Vol. 26, Pages 2018: An Activatable T1-Weighted MR Contrast Agent: A Noninvasive Tool for Tracking the Vicinal Thiol Motif of Thioredoxin in Live Cells

Molecules, Vol. 26, Pages 2018: An Activatable T1-Weighted MR Contrast Agent: A Noninvasive Tool for Tracking the Vicinal Thiol Motif of Thioredoxin in Live Cells Molecules doi: 10.3390/molecules26072018 Authors: Jongeun Kang Eunha Hwang Hyunseung Lee Mi Young Cho Sanu Karan Hak Nam Kim Jong Seung Kim Jonathan L. Sessler Sankarprasad Bhuniya Kwan Soo Hong We have synthesized new magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) T1 contrast agents (CA1 and CA2) that permit the activatable recognition of the cellular vicinal thiol motifs of the protein thioredoxin. The contrast agents showed MR relaxivities typical of gadolinium complexes with a single water molecule coordinated to a Gd3+ center (i.e., ~4.54 mM−1s−1) for both CA1 and CA2 at 60 MHz. The contrast agent CA1 showed a ~140% relaxivity enhancement in the presence of thioredoxin, a finding attributed to a reduction in the flexibility of the molecule after binding to thioredoxin. Support for this rationale, as opposed to one based on preferential binding, came from 1H-15N-HSQC NMR spectral studies; these revealed that the binding affinities toward thioredoxin were almost the same for both CA1 and CA2. In the case of CA1, T1-weighted phantom images of cancer cells (MCF-7, A549) could be generated based on the expression of thioredoxin. We further confirmed thioredoxin expression-dependent changes in the T1-weighted contrast via knockdown of the expression of the thioredoxin using siRNA-transfected MCF-7 cel...
Source: Molecules - Category: Chemistry Authors: Tags: Article Source Type: research