RESUMO
Despite advances in immunotherapy for the treatment of cancers,not all patients can benefit from programmed cell death ligand 1(PD-L1)immune checkpoint blockade therapy.Anti-PD-L1 therapeutic effects reportedly correlate with the PD-L1 expression level;hence,accurate detection of PD-L1 expression can guide immunotherapy to achieve better therapeutic effects.Therefore,based on the high affinity antibody Nb109,a new site-specifically radiolabeled tracer,68Ga-NODA-cysteine,aspartic acid,and valine(CDV)-Nb109,was designed and synthesized to accurately monitor PD-L1 expression.The tracer 68Ga-NODA-CDV-Nb109 was obtained using a site-specific conjugation strategy with a radiochemical yield of about 95％and radiochemical purity of 97％.It showed high affinity for PD-L1 with a dissociation constant of 12.34±1.65 nM.Both the cell uptake assay and positron emission tomography(PET)imaging revealed higher tracer uptake in PD-L1-positive A375-hPD-L1 and U87 tumor cells than in PD-L1-negative A375 tumor cells.Meanwhile,dynamic PET imaging of a NC1-H1299 xenograft indicated that doxorubicin could upregulate PD-L1 expression,allowing timely interventional immunotherapy.In conclusion,this tracer could sensitively and dynamically monitor changes in PD-L1 expression levels in different cancers and help screen patients who can benefit from anti-PD-L1 immunotherapy.
RESUMO
Objective:To synthesize a novel site-specifically labelled probe 68Ga-1, 4, 7, 10-tetraazacyclododecane-1, 4, 7, 10-tetraacetic acid (DOTA)-Cys-Asp-Val (CDV)-Nb109 and explore its potential for detection of the programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) expression level in different tumors. Methods:Firstly, CDV was inserted into the tail of the sequence of Nb109 by genetic engineering. Then the precursor DOTA-CDV-Nb109 was prepared by mixing the maleimide-DOTA and the single-domain antibody CDV-Nb109 (amount of substance ratio 1∶1) via the maleimide-cysteine site-specific coupling strategy. Subsequently, the DOTA-CDV-Nb109 was labeled with 68Ga and purified by PD-10 column. Human melanoma A375, human PD-L1 transfected melanoma A375-hPD-L1 and human glioma U87 tumor-bearing mice models were established, and the diagnostic value of 68Ga-DOTA-CDV-Nb109 was evaluated by stability assay, cellular uptake, and microPET imaging. One-way analysis of variance and the least significant difference t test were used to analyze the data. Results:The probe 68Ga-DOTA-CDV-Nb109 was obtained with the radiochemical yield of (69.79±4.69)%, radiochemical purity more than 97%, and molar activity of (12.85±1.51) GBq/μmol. 68Ga-DOTA-CDV-Nb109 had strong binding affinity for A375-hPD-L1 with the dissociation constant ( Kd) of (66.43±17.89) nmol/L. The uptake of 68Ga-DOTA-CDV-Nb109 in A375-hPD-L1 and U87 cells were (3.17±0.15) percentage of the added radioactivity dose (%AD) and (2.08±0.03) %AD respectively, which were significantly higher than that in A375 cells ((1.21±0.14) %AD; F=82.87, t values: 15.23, 9.98, P values: <0.001, 0.003). The tumor uptake of the probe in A375-hPD-L1 ((5.21±0.35) percentage of injected dose per ml (%ID/ml)) and U87 tumor-bearing mice ((3.44±0.69) %ID/ml) were significantly higher than that in A375 tumor-bearing mice ((2.17±0.36) %ID/ml; F=249.72, t values: 35.70, 3.43, both P<0.001). Conclusion:The site-specifically labelled probe 68Ga-DOTA-CDV-Nb109, which can non-invasively and dynamically monitor the change of PD-L1 expression level in different tumors and help screen patients who can benefit from PD-L1 immune checkpoint blocking therapy, is successfully synthesized with high radiochemical purity.