Metals in Imaging of Alzheimer’s Disease

• Main Authors: Olga Krasnovskaya, Daniil Spector, Alexander Zlobin, Kirill Pavlov, Peter Gorelkin, Alexander Erofeev, Elena Beloglazkina, Alexander Majouga
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: MDPI AG 2020-12-01
• Series: International Journal of Molecular Sciences
• Subjects: Alzheimer disease; amyloid; PET; SPECT; MRI
• Online Access: https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/21/23/9190

One of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is the deposition of amyloid plaques in the brain parenchyma, which occurs 7–15 years before the onset of cognitive symptoms of the pathology. Timely diagnostics of amyloid formations allows identifying AD at an early stage and initiating inhibitor therapy, delaying the progression of the disease. However, clinically used radiopharmaceuticals based on ¹¹C and ¹⁸F are synchrotron-dependent and short-lived. The design of new metal-containing radiopharmaceuticals for AD visualization is of interest. The development of coordination compounds capable of effectively crossing the blood-brain barrier (BBB) requires careful selection of a ligand moiety, a metal chelating scaffold, and a metal cation, defining the method of supposed Aβ visualization. In this review, we have summarized metal-containing drugs for positron emission tomography (PET), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) imaging of Alzheimer’s disease. The obtained data allow assessing the structure-ability to cross the BBB ratio.