In Vivo Targeting and Positron Emission Tomography Imaging of Tumor with Intrinsically Radioactive Metal–Organic Frameworks Nanomaterials

Nanoscale metal–organic frameworks (nMOF) materials represent an attractive tool for various biomedical applications. Due to the chemical versatility, enormous porosity, and tunable degradability of nMOFs, they have been adopted as carriers for delivery of imaging and/or therapeutic cargos. However, the relatively low stability of most nMOFs has limited practical in vivo applications. Here we report the production and characterization of an intrinsically radioactive UiO-66 nMOF (89Zr-UiO-66) with incorporation of positron-emitting isotope zirconium-89 (89Zr). 89Zr-UiO-66 was further functionalized with pyrene-derived polyethylene glycol (Py–PGA-PEG) and conjugated with a peptide ligand (F3) to nucleolin for targeting of triple-negative breast tumors. Doxorubicin (DOX) was loaded onto UiO-66 with a relatively high loading capacity (1 mg DOX/mg UiO-66) and served as both a therapeutic cargo and a fluorescence visualizer in this study. Functionalized 89Zr-UiO-66 demonstrated strong radiochemical and material stability in different biological media. Based on the findings from cellular targeting and in vivo positron emission tomography (PET) imaging, we can conclude that 89Zr-UiO-66/Py–PGA-PEG-F3 can serve as an image-guidable, tumor-selective cargo delivery nanoplatform. In addition, toxicity evaluation confirmed that properly PEGylated UiO-66 did not impose acute or chronic toxicity to the test subjects. With selective targeting of nucleolin on both tumor vasculature and tumor cells, this intrinsically radioactive nMOF can find broad application in cancer theranostics.