Fluorous-Soluble Metal Chelate for Sensitive Fluorine-19 Magnetic Resonance Imaging Nanoemulsion Probes

Fluorine-19 MRI is an emerging cellular imaging approach, enabling lucid, quantitative "hot-spot" imaging with no background signal. The utility of ¹⁹F-MRI to detect inflammation and cell therapy products in vivo could be expanded by improving the intrinsic sensitivity of the probe by molecular design. We describe a metal chelate based on a salicylidene-tris(aminomethyl)ethane core, with solubility in perfluorocarbon (PFC) oils, and a potent accelerator of the ¹⁹F longitudinal relaxation time ( T₁). Shortening T₁ can increase the ¹⁹F image sensitivity per time and decrease the minimum number of detectable cells. We used the condensation between the tripodal ligand tris-1,1,1-(aminomethyl)ethane and salicylaldehyde to form the salicylidene-tris(aminomethyl)ethane chelating agent (SALTAME). We purified four isomers of SALTAME, elucidated structures using X-ray scattering and NMR, and identified a single isomer with high PFC solubility. Mn⁴⁺, Fe³⁺, Co³⁺, and Ga³⁺ cations formed stable and separable chelates with SALTAME, but only Fe³⁺ yielded superior T₁ shortening with modest line broadening at 3 and 9.4 T. We mixed Fe³⁺ chelate with perfluorooctyl bromide (PFOB) to formulate a stable paramagnetic nanoemulsion imaging probe and assessed its biocompatibility in macrophages in vitro using proliferation, cytotoxicity, and phenotypic cell assays. Signal-to-noise modeling of paramagnetic PFOB shows that sensitivity enhancement of nearly 4-fold is feasible at clinical magnetic field strengths using a ¹⁹F spin-density-weighted gradient-echo pulse sequence. We demonstrate the utility of this paramagnetic nanoemulsion as an in vivo MRI probe for detecting inflammation macrophages in mice. Overall, these paramagnetic PFC compounds represent a platform for the development of sensitive ¹⁹F probes.