Convenient Synthesis and Evaluation of Heptadentate Bifunctional Ligand for Radioimmunotherapy Applications

An efficient synthetic route to a bifunctional chelating agent C-NE3TA-NCS for antibody-targeted radioimmunotherapy (RIT) applications was developed. Various synthetic methods centered on the key reaction steps including bimolecular cyclization, ring opening reactions of aziridine and aziridinium cations, and reductive aminiation were explored to optimize the preparation of a tetraaza-based chelate TANPA and C-NE3TA analogues. Heptadentate C-NE3TA-NCS was conjugated to a tumor targeting antibody and compared to hexadentate C-NOTA-NCS for radiolabeling reaction kinetics with lanthanides for RIT. C-NE3TA-antibody conjugate displayed significantly enhanced complexation kinetics with 90Y as compared to C-NOTA-antibody conjugate. The synthetic methods for TANPA and C-NE3TA-NCS reported herein have broad applications for preparation of bifunctioanl macrocyclic chelating agents.

The synthesis of unsymmetrically N-substituted chiral 1,4,7-triazacyclononanes

A number of chiral unsymmetrically N-substituted 1,4,7-triazacyclononane ligands have been prepared by modular methods. The key step in the synthesis centres on the macrocyclisation of three tertiary amide precursors under standard Richman-Atkins conditions which allows for subsequent N-functionalisation.