Harnessing medically relevant metals onto water-soluble subphthalocyanines: towards bimodal imaging and theranostics.

Subphthalocyanine (SubPc), a putative fluorophore for optical imaging (OI), was conjugated to chelating ligands (DOTA, DTPA) affording water-soluble conjugates complexed with (non-radioactive) metals relevant to the following medical imaging techniques/therapies: MRI (Gd), PET (Cu, Ga), SPECT (In, Ga, Lu), RIT (Cu, Lu, Y), and NCT (Gd). Magneto-optical properties of ditopic gadolinium species (and optical properties of other metal containing species) were examined (brightness (ε × ΦF) and relaxivity R1) and fluorescence confocal/biphoton microscopy studies were conducted.