Targeted drug-delivery using multifunctional nanomaterials has become a major research focus as a means to overcome the limitations of low therapeutic efficacy and toxicity after systemic administration of chemotherapeutic drugs for treating cancer. The most advanced materials also incorporate an imaging contrast agent to enable simultaneous therapy and imaging of diseased tissues. There is currently no drug-delivery agent incorporating a fluorine magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agent that provides all of the characteristics of a multifunctional drug-delivery agent – choice of therapeutic payload, molecular targeting, biocompatibility, and imaging agent. Unless such a material is developed to fulfill this unmet need, fluorine MRI will remain underutilized as a cutting-edge means of detecting and treating human diseases such as cancer. Here, we present work toward synthesizing new nanomaterials for use as multifunctional 19F MRI contrast agents. We have synthesized a variety of fluorine-containing organic electrophiles for conjugation to nanomaterials that posses complementary nucleophiles. Many of the electrophiles contain hydrophilic groups to maximize solvation in aqueous environments relevant to biomedical imaging. To date, most of our work has centered on conjugating these fluorinated electrophiles to porous silica nanoparticles, a well-characterized platform for multifunctional drug-delivery agents. Our studies to-date show that functionalization of silica nanoparticles with fluorine is possible, and that these materials can generate useable signal in 19F NMR under aqueous environments. Nonetheless, our system requires optimization to prevent hydrolysis of the organic linkers. In addition, we have begun work toward synthesizing fluorinated amphiphiles based on β-cyclodextrin, an inexpensive, safe, and natural nanomaterial.

Toward novel nanomaterials for 19F magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents

254th National Meeting (2017)

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