The 18F-labeled N-(4-fluorobenzylidene)oxime (FBO)-dimeric (ZHER2:477)2 conjugate, abbreviated as 18F-FBO-(ZHER2:477)2, is an affibody derivative synthesized by Cheng et al. for positron emission tomography (PET) of HER2-expressing tumors (1).
Affibody molecules are a group of nonimmunogenic scaffold proteins that derive from the B-domain of staphylococcal surface protein A (2, 3). In the past several years, affibodies have drawn significant attention for developing imaging and therapeutic agents because of their unique features (3, 4). First, affibodies are small, with only 58 amino acid residues (~7 kDa) (3, 5). The small size allows affibodies to be generated with solid-phase peptide synthesis and to be cleared quickly from kidneys. Second, affibodies have a high binding affinity and specificity to their targets. Their binding affinity can be further improved by generating multimeric constructs through the solvent-exposed termini of affibody Z-domain. The anti-HER2 monomeric affibody ZHER2:4 is an example that has a binding affinity of ~50 nM, but its dimeric form, (ZHER2:4)2, exhibits an improved binding affinity of up to ~3 nM in vitro (6). Third, affibodies lack cysteine residues and disulfide bridges in structure, and they fold rapidly. These features make it possible to chemically synthesize fully functional molecules and to introduce unique cysteine residues or chemical groups into affibodies for site-specific labeling. Several anti-HER2 affibody derivatives have been synthesized in this way. The imaging agent HPEM-His6-(ZHER2:4)2-Cys was generated by radiobrominating the dimeric (ZHER2:4)2 through the cysteine residues that were introduced to the C-terminus of (ZHER2:4)2 (7). Several affibody derivatives (e.g.,
The investigators at Stanford University first tested the feasibility of the monomeric and dimeric forms of anti-HER2 affibody ZHER2:477 for molecular imaging. Both forms of the ZHER2:477 molecule were radiofluorinated with an 18F-labeled prosthetic group of 4-18F-fluorobenzaldehyde (18F-FBO-ZHER2:477 and 18F-FBO-(ZHER2:477)2, respectively) (1). The investigators have also coupled 64Cu to the affibody through DOTA, leading to the development of imaging agents 64Cu-DOTA- ZHER2:477 and 64Cu-DOTA-(ZHER2:477)2 (9). Interestingly, these studies showed that smaller affibody constructs performed better in vivo in terms of tumor uptake and clearance in spite of the lower affinity in vitro. The investigators then generated a class of small proteins consisting of two α-helix bundles of the 3-helix affibody by deleting the helix 3 because the binding domain localizes in the α-helices 1 and 2 bundles (5). One of these 2-helix proteins is MUT-DS, which has α-helices 1 and 2 bundles, with a disulfide bridge being formed between the two inserted homocysteines (10-12). MUT-DS showed a binding affinity to HER2 in the low-nM range. The radiolabeled MUT-DS derivatives exhibited favorable pharmacokinetics for both imaging and therapy of HER2-expressing tumors (refer to MUT-DS derived agents in MICAD).
This series of chapters summarizes the data obtained with the ZHER2:477 derivatives, and this chapter presents the data obtained with 18F-FBO-(ZHER2:477)2 (1).