Synthesis and functional evaluation of chiral dendrimer–triamine-coordinated Gd complexes as highly sensitive MRI contrast agents

Novel chiral dendrimer–triamine-coordinated Gd complexes were synthesized and shown to have longitudinal relaxivity (r1) 3 times higher than that of clinically used Gd-DTPA. The pharmacokinetic differences between optical isomers were estimated from the affinity of 2-(R) and 2-(S) with bovine serum albumin (BSA), respectively, by a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) measurement. As a result, the association constant Ka of 2-(S) was about 4 times higher than that of 2-(R), which means that 2-(S) is retained in the vascular retention for a longer time after administration. This result was also supported by T1-weighted MR images of mice before and after the intravenous injection of 2-(R) and 2-(S), as well as the time-course of the signal intensities (SI) at the blood vessels and quantification of Gd3+ concentration in the blood and urine.