Determination of plasma protein binding of positron emission tomography radioligands by high-performance frontal analysis.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an imaging technique based on the use of radioligands labeled with short lived radionuclides, such as (11)C (t½=20.4min) and (18)F (t½=109.8min), which as a consequence often requires rapid plasma protein binding analysis methods. In addition, PET radioligands can suffer from non-specific binding to the membrane when ultrafiltraion, which is the most commonly used method for measuring protein binding in PET, is employed. In this study a high-performance frontal analysis (HPFA) method based on incorporation of a gel filtration column (discovery(®) BIO GFC 100, 50mm×4.6mm, 5μm, 100Å) into a radio-LC system with phosphate buffered saline (PBS, pH 7.4) at a flow rate of 3ml/min as mobile phase was developed and investigated for four PET radioligands. The minimum injection volume (MIV) of plasma, which is a crucial factor in HPFA, was determined to be 200μl (human), 500μl (monkey), 700μl (human) and 1000μl (monkey) for these four radioligands. The MIV values increased as a higher fraction of the radioligand was present in the protein-free form. The protein binding results obtained were in good agreement with ultrafiltration and the method did not suffer from non-specific binding. The short analysis time (<12min) allowed multiple protein binding measurements during time course of a human [(11)C]PBR28 PET study.