Jang Woo Park1, Hui-jin Song1, Hee-Kyung Kim1, Jee Hye Seo1, Seong-Uk Jin1, Jong Su Baeck1, Moon Han1, Ji-Young Kim2, Yongmin Chang3, 4
1Department of Medical & Biological Engineering, Kyungpook National University, daegu, Korea, Republic of; 2Department of School of Medicine, Kyungpook National University, daegu, Korea, Republic of; 3Department of Diagnostic Radiology, Kyungpook National University, daegu, Korea, Republic of; 4Kyungpook National University, Department of Molecular Medicine, daegu, Korea, Republic of
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) allows the direct visualization of the bone and soft tissues and inflammatory activity. Angiogenesis is known to play a significant role in RA. We researched the inflammatory angiogenesis in RA using angiogenesis specific MR contrast agent, Gd-DOTA-RGD. Arginine-glycine-aspartic (RGD) peptide is well known to have a high specific affinity for v3-integrin, which is over-expressed in endothelial cells during angiogenesis. Targeting and blocking experiments about v3-integrin receptors were used to confirm integrin specific contrast enhancement of Gd-DOTA-RG. This study demonstrates the successful application of Gd-DOTA-RGD as a potential molecular MR agent for inflammatory disease such as RA with specificity to v3-integrin receptor in the inflammatory angiogenesis.