Synthesis and functional evaluation of chiral dendrimer-triamine-coordinated Gd complexes with polyaminoalcohol end groups as highly sensitive MRI contrast agents

Abstract

Novel chiral dendrimer-triamine-coordinated Gd complexes with polyaminoalcohol end groups were synthesized and shown to have longitudinal relaxivity (r1) values 5 times higher than that of clinically used Gd-DTPA. The affinities of Gd-4a and Gd-4b for bovine serum albumin (BSA), respectively, were estimated by a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) measurement. The amino groups of the dendrimer were then conjugated with PEG. This conjugation with PEG strongly affected its ability to attenuate signals in T1-weighted MRI.