Vithanarachchi Sashiprabha M, Allen Matthew J
Department of Chemistry, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202, USA.
Curr Mol Imaging. 2012 Oct 1;1(1):12-25. doi: 10.2174/2211555211201010012.
This review describes recent research efforts focused on increasing the specificity of contrast agents for proton magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Contrast agents play an indispensable role in MRI by enhancing the inherent contrast of images; however, the non-specific nature of current clinical contrast agents limits their usefulness. This limitation can be addressed by conjugating contrast agents or contrast-agent-loaded carriers-including polymers, nanoparticles, dendrimers, and liposomes-to molecules that bind to biological sites of interest. An alternative approach to conjugation is synthetically mimicking biological structures with metal complexes that are also contrast agents. In this review, we describe the advantages and limitations of these two targeting strategies with respect to translation from in vitro to in vivo imaging while focusing on advances from the last ten years.
本综述描述了近期旨在提高质子磁共振成像（MRI）造影剂特异性的研究工作。造影剂通过增强图像的固有对比度在MRI中发挥着不可或缺的作用；然而，当前临床造影剂的非特异性限制了它们的效用。可以通过将造影剂或负载造影剂的载体（包括聚合物、纳米颗粒、树枝状大分子和脂质体）与结合到感兴趣生物位点的分子偶联来解决这一限制。偶联的另一种方法是用同样作为造影剂的金属配合物合成模拟生物结构。在本综述中，我们描述了这两种靶向策略在从体外成像向体内成像转化方面的优点和局限性，同时关注过去十年的进展。
