Kinetic inertness evaluation of copper complexes using gel electrophoresis techniques

The development of highly stable radiocopper complexes is one major challenge that seeks to further improved radiopharmaceuticals for medicinal applications. In many cases, radiocopper complexes suffer the fate of dissociation in vivo which is contributed to loss of the radionuclide resulting amongst others in an unspecific accumulation in non-target tissues and thus in poor target-to-background ratios. The kinetic lability has been addressed as major issue for transchelation or dissociation in vivo. Valuable information of kinetic inertness can be derived from non-physiological and non-radiotracer conditions e.g., ligand or metal ion challenge experiments, acid-assisted dissociation studies. Serum stability experiments are more suitable, since they are associated with in vivo conditions. Usually, the method of choice to measure the kinetic inertness involves a time-consuming radio-HPLC procedure. In contrast, we describe two reliable in vitro assays using standard gel electrophoresis techniques which provide a timesaving work-flow for measuring simultaneously a variety of copper-containing chelates. With this procedure, different radiocopper chelates can be evaluated and compared concerning their kinetic inertness using protein challenge assays. Moreover, both experiments are transferable not only to newly designed chelates, but also to conjugates containing targeting molecules such as peptides or proteins.