Target-specific ligands and gadolinium-based complexes for imaging of dopamine receptors: Synthesis, binding affinity, and relaxivity

Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) are two extremely important imaging modalities with unlimited tissue penetration. Molecular imaging is a field by which specific targets or biological processes are imaged. MRI, which is used for functional imaging and for the diagnosis of a broad range of pathologic conditions, suffers from limited specificity and intrinsically low sensitivity. One possibility to alleviate partially these limitations is to use contrast agents (CAs) and more importantly target-specific CAs. We have developed a modular synthesis of novel ligands and gadolinium(III)-based target-specific MRI CAs with high relaxivity and high binding affinity toward the dopamine receptors. The prepared ligands and MRI CAs are based on spiperone as targeting moiety. The prepared target-specific CAs can potentially be used for in vitro and possibly in vivo MR imaging of dopaminergic receptors. Importantly the ligands prepared using the modular approach presented in this paper may also be useful for other imaging modalities such as PET (or SPECT) by just replacing, at the last stage of the synthesis, the gadolinium cation by other metal cations having relatively long half-lives, such as ⁶⁴Cu, ⁸⁹Zr, ¹¹In, and more.