Breast carcinoma cell uptake and biodistribution of technetium-99m-carboxymethyl benzylamide dextran

Carboxymethyl Benzylamide Dextran (CMDB7) displayed an in vitro growth inhibitory activity on breast tumor cells. CMDB7 is able to disrupt the interaction of angiogenic growth factors (FGF2, TGF beta and PDGF) with their membrane receptors. This compound blocks the angiogenesis of MDA-MB435 carcinoma xenografted in mammary fat pad and their lung metastases in nude mice. In this work, we studied the uptake of CMDB7 labeled with 99mTc in cultured human breast cancer MCF-7 cell line and the highly tumorigenic MCF-7ras cell line (Ha-ras-transfected MCF-7 cells) and the in vivo distribution in MCF-7ras tumor-bearing mice. The 99mTc-CMDB7 are stable and the intracellular concentration is time-dependent and reaches a plateau at 180 minutes. 99mTc CMDB7 uptake is much higher in MCF-7ras cells than MCF-7 cells. Since CMDB7 is internalized and could also inhibit cell proliferation by acting at nuclear sites, we investigated the MCF-7ras nuclear localization after cell fractionation. Cell fractionation revealed a cytoplasmic and nuclear internalization of CMDB7. The tumor uptakes of 99mTc-CMDB7 were 0.34%, 0.72% and 0.62% of the administrated doses per gram of tumor tissue at 1 hour, 3 hour and 5 hours respectively after their injection. The blood clearance of 99mTc CMDB7 was very rapid and the liver, spleen and kidney uptakes were very weak. These results confirm the absence of toxicity of CMDB7 and the usefulness of CMDB7 in cancer therapy by targeting breast tumors.