Design of Porphyrin-dota-Like Scaffolds as All-in-One Multimodal Heterometallic Complexes for Medical Imaging

A series of four multimodal ligands incorporating one porphyrin moiety and one or more dota-like macrocycles all-in-one in the same molecular architecture have been synthesized and full characterized. The corresponding gadolinium(III) complexes were also synthesized and heterometallic complexes incorporating both gadolinium(III) and copper(II) ions were prepared as potential MRI/PET multimodal contrast agents. One ligand (L4) includes an amine moiety that can be activated for easy conversion into an isothiocyanate group for further anchoring to a biological vector. Preliminary relaxivity, cytotoxicity, and MRI studies showed that the complexes developed in this work are very promising medical-imaging agents for the enhancement of contrast in bimodal MRI techniques.