In vivo imaging of ?(v)?(3) has important diagnostic and therapeutic applications. (18)F-Galacto-arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD) has been developed for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging of integrin ?(v)?(3) expression and is now being tested on humans. Dimerization and multimerization of cyclic RGD peptides have been reported to improve the integrin ?(v)?(3)-binding affinity due to the polyvalency effect. Here, we compared a number of new dimeric RGD peptide tracers with the clinically used (18)F-galacto-RGD.
Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), Department of Radiology and Bio-X Program, Stanford University School of Medicine, 1201 Welch Rd., P095, Stanford, CA 94305-5484, USA.