TY - JOUR AU - Kolks, Niklas AU - Neumaier, Felix AU - Neumaier, Bernd AU - Zlatopolskiy, Boris D. TI - Preparation of NIn-Methyl-6-[18F]fluoro- and 5-Hydroxy-7-[18F]fluorotryptophans as Candidate PET-Tracers for Pathway-Specific Visualization of Tryptophan Metabolism JO - International journal of molecular sciences VL - 24 IS - 20 SN - 1422-0067 CY - Basel PB - Molecular Diversity Preservation International M1 - FZJ-2023-04258 SP - 15251 PY - 2023 AB - Abstract: Tryptophan (Trp) is an essential proteinogenic amino acid and metabolic precursor forseveral signaling molecules that has been implicated in many physiological and pathological pro-cesses. Since the two main branches of Trp metabolism—serotonin biosynthesis and kynureninepathway—are differently affected by a variety of neurological and neoplastic diseases, selective visual-ization of these pathways is of high clinical relevance. However, while positron emission tomography(PET) with existing probes can be used for non-invasive assessment of total Trp metabolism, optimalimaging agents for pathway-specific PET imaging are still lacking. In this work, we describe the prepa-ration of two 18F-labeled Trp derivatives, NIn-methyl-6-[18F]fluorotryptophan (NIn-Me-6-[18F]FTrp)and 5-hydroxy-7-[18F]fluorotryptophan (5-HO-7-[18F]FTrp). We also report feasible synthetic routesfor the preparation of the hitherto unknown boronate radiolabeling precursors and non-radioactivereference compounds. Under optimized conditions, alcohol-enhanced Cu-mediated radiofluorinationof the respective precursors afforded NIn-Me-6-[18F]FTrp and 5-HO-7-[18F]FTrp as application-readysolutions in radiochemical yields of 45 ± 7% and 29 ± 4%, respectively. As such, our work providesaccess to two promising candidate probes for pathway-specific visualization of Trp metabolism inamounts sufficient for their preclinical evaluation. LB - PUB:(DE-HGF)16 C6 - 37894930 UR - <Go to ISI:>//WOS:001094305600001 DO - DOI:10.3390/ijms242015251 UR - https://juser.fz-juelich.de/record/1017642 ER -