Integrative Graduate
Education and
Research Traineeship

Highlight

Core Platforms using Porphyrin Ligands

Core Porphyrin Chelates

Projects:

IGERT: Returning the Radio to Chemistry: Integrating...

Institution:

City University of New York Hunter College

Primary Strategic Goal:

Discovery: Foster research that will advance the frontiers of knowledge, emphasizing areas of greatest opportunity and potential benefit and establishing the Nation as a global leader in fundamental transformational science and engineering.

Secondary Strategic Goal:

Learning: Build the Nation's research capability through critical investments in advanced instrumentation, facilities, cyber infrastructure, and experimental tools.

Achievement/Results

The Drain group has developed a core porphyrin chelate that can be appended with a variety of biotargeting motifs with click-type chemistry to form a multifunctional agent that can be used as a biochemical tracker in cells and as an imaging agent for diseases such as cancer. The chelate can tightly bind nearly every metal ion in the periodic table and the click chemistry tolerates most functional groups found on sugars, lipids, and proteins. We have developed a mild metalation strategy so that the penultimate step is the chelation of the radionuclide followed by purification. Initial studies will be with 64Cu, and we know that exchange of the fluorines is also possible (see figure).

Address Goals

This is interdisciplinary training for the students in that the radio-chemical labels are being added to the ligand.