Technetium-99m mercaptoalbumin as a potential substitute or technetium-99m labelled red blood cells

Technetium-99m labelled red blood cells (99mTc-RBCs) are far superior to 99mTc-labelled human serum albumin (99mTc-HSA) for radionuclide ventriculography, but their labelling is more complex, time consuming and risk bearing (in vitro labelling) or suffers from interference by some medications (in vivo labelling). We have now modified HSA by the introduction of mercapto groups with the purpose of preparing stable and practical 99mTc-mercaptoalbumin with long retention in the vascular system, that could replace 99mTc-RBCs. HSA was incubated with N-succinimidyl S-acetylthioacetate (SATA) or N-succinimidyl 2,3-di(S-acetylthio) propionate (SATP) to introduce a chain containing one or two protected sulfhydryl groups on some of the lysine amino groups. After purification by size-exclusion chromatography (SEC), the mercapto groups were deprotected by incubation at alkaline pH or by treatment with hydroxylamine. The reaction products were used with or without SEC purification for direct or exchange labelling experiments with 99mTc at neutral pH. SEC-HPLC was used to determine labelling yields and to isolate pure 99mTc-mercaptoalbumin. Stable 99mTc-mercaptoalbumin complexes could be formed in 90%-95% yield after coupling albumin with SATA or SATP in all molar ratios used followed by deacetylation in one of the mentioned conditions. The most favourable results were obtained after reaction of SATA or SATP with HSA in a 25:1 ratio and deprotection with NH2OH. The stability of the resulting 99mTc-mercaptoacetyl-albumin (99mTc-MA-HSA) and 99mTc-dimercaptopropionyl-albumin (99mTc-DMP-HSA) and their retention in vivo in plasma of mice and rabbits are clearly higher than that of conventional 99mTc-HSA preparations. 99mTc-DMP-HSA approaches the behaviour of 125I-HSA quite well in both animal species. A preliminary study with 99mTc-DMP-HSA in a volunteer showed a retention in the vascular compartment almost identical to that of 99mTc-RBCs and clearly higher than that of a common 99mTc-HSA preparation. The results indicate that these 99mTc-mercaptoalbumins and especially 99mTc-DMP-HSA are very promising as a practical alternative to 99mTc-RBCs.