preliminary imaging studies of [61cu]diacetyl-bis (n4-methylthiosemi-carbazone) in normal and hypoxic tumor models

introduction: [61cu]diacetyl-bis(n4-methylthiosemicarbazone) ([61cu]atsm) is a well-established hypoxia imaging tracer with simple production and significant specifity. in this work the accumulation of the tracer is studied in wild-type, necrotic and hypoxic fibrosarcoma tumors. methods: [61cu]atsm was prepared using atsm ligand and [61cu]cuoac followed by i.v. administration and imaging studies in wild-type rats and hypoxic fibrosarcoma-bearing mice. results: [61cu]atsm with high radiochemical purity (>99%, hplc, rtlc) was injected to wild-type rats as well as hypoxic and necrotic fibrosarcoma-bearing mice followed by imaging up to 3 hours. conclusion: [61cu]atsm was mainly accumulated in liver, as well as kidney and bladder and less but still significant in brain of wild-type rats. a significant and hypoxia-specific tumor/non tumor ratio in hypoxic models was observed by co-incidence imaging 2 h post injection, while in necrotic and 12-week tumor-induced mice very slight tumor uptakes were detected. [61cu]atsm is a positron emission tomography (pet) radiotracer for selective tumor hypoxia imaging from necrotic and proliferative tumors.