Tritiated-6-beta-fluoro-6-desoxy-oxymorphone ([3H]FOXY): a new ligand and photoaffinity probe for the mu opioid receptors.

6-Beta-fluoro-6-desoxy-oxymorphone (FOXY) is a fluorinated derivative of oxymorphone originally developed as a potential PET scanning ligand. Preliminary work (Rothman et al., Neuropeptides 4: 311-317, 1984) demonstrated that [3H]FOXY selectively labeled mu opioid binding sites with low levels of nonspecific binding. In this study the opiate receptor subtypes labeled by [3H]FOXY and [3H]D-ala2-MePhe4, Gly-ol5-enkephalin ([3H] DAGO) were compared using site directed acylating agents and binding surface analysis. Although the data indicated that both ligands selectively label mu opiate receptors, other experiments demonstrated that [3H]DAGO and [3H]FOXY labeled mu binding sites differently. Additional experiments demonstrated that [3H]FOXY can be used as a high yield photoaffinity label for the mu opiate receptor subtype.