Development of a molecule with several chemically equivalent F atoms, characterised by sufficiently short relaxation times to allow the recording of an MRI image under good conditions, as well as a biological vector capable of specific tissue targeting.

Description

In the NMR and Molecular Imaging Laboratory, the research fields are focused on the elaboration of contrast
agents for medical imaging.
Medical imaging is indeed a dynamic area of research whose the goal is the elaboration of more efficient and
more specific contrast agents which can be used to optimize the detection of affected tissues such as cancers
or tumours while decreasing the injected quantity of agents.
Paramagnetic contrast agents containing fluorine atoms can be used both on proton and fluorine MRI. This
research field is therefore promising thanks to the ability to map the anatomy by 1H MRI and locate exactly
the agents by 19F MRI without any background signal from the endogenous fluorine. In this domain, one of
the challenges is to synthesize a molecule containing several chemically equivalent fluorine atoms
characterized by a short relaxation time to allow the measurement of fluorine MRI images in good conditions
which also contain a biological vector able to target specific tissues. Those agents can be characterized during their synthesis by mass spectrometry, 1H, 13C and 19F NMR. Relaxivity
measurements can also be done to evaluate the diagnosis potential of the synthesized contrast agents.