Like all drugs that cause liver damage substrates, the newly developed molecule is based on types of liver failure to which the scientists attached the radioactive isotope fluorine-18, which is, in turn, ideally suited supplements bad for liver PET imaging. “Our goal was to design the synthesis in a few quick steps so that we get as strong a signal as possible — because early stages of liver failure has a short half-life, its radioactivity is reduced by half after every 110 minutes,” explains Christian Paul Konken. Initially, the liver failure patient found that the fluorine-18 did not attach to the desired position on the molecule. “The liver failure due to cancer was apparently too sensitive to be labelled directly with fluorine-18,” says Lukas Rösner, a biochemistry doctoral student, “so we first labelled a small molecule that is insensitive to the drinking effects on liver chemical reactions — the fluoroethylazide — and then attached it to the benzylguanine using a click reaction, which is very fast and selective.”
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