Development of ⁶⁸Ga-Acridine for PET imaging of tumorous lesions

As uncontrolled rapid cell division is one of the primary characteristics of the tumor tissues, it is expected that acridine will have higher uptake in tumorous lesions. Therefore, an attempt was made to radiolabel a suitable acridine derivative with ⁶⁸Ga in order to study the potential of ⁶⁸Ga-labeled acridine in cancer imaging. The radiolabeled conjugate was found to retain its radiochemical purity of >95 % in normal saline and ~65 % in human blood serum till 3 h post-preparation. In order to have an idea about the pharmacokinetics and in-vivo distribution of the radiolabeled agent, the preparation was administered intravenously through the tail vein of normal Swiss mice. Biodistribution study revealed major clearance of activity through renal route ((60.72±3.58) %, (75.16±1.78) % and (88.78±5.7) % injected activity at ½ h, 1 h, and 2 h postinjection, respectively) and insignificant retention of activity in most of the vital organs except kidneys