Production of the antimicrobial peptide UBI 29-41 labelled with 99mTc by an indirect method

The infection processes are a major problem in human health causing a high number of human deaths all around the world. Diagnostic imaging in nuclear medicine is an attractive option in the detection of infection processes due to its sensitivity. The antimicrobial peptides are very important in the development of new radiopharmaceuticals, since their antimicrobial activity towards a great variety of microorganisms have been proven. The aim of this work was to obtain the antimicrobial peptide UBI 29-41 labelled with technetium 99 m, by an indirect method via NHS-Hynic and tricine as a coligand, and evaluate its stability and its ability to discriminate between infection and inflammation sites. The radiochemical purity of the labeling procedure was 95.5±1,2 %. The cysteine challenge showed a great stability of the 99mTc UBI-Hynic, and the stability in human serum showed that the 81% of the radioactivity remained bounded to UBI-Hynic at 48 hs of incubation. The bio distribution's studies showed main elimination via kidney of 99mTc UBI-Hynic and the target/non target ratio was 1,81 for infected mice and 1,16 for inflamed mice. (author)