In vivo evaluation of Cerenkov luminescence and SPECT imaging for nanoscale 177Lu-labeled metal-organic framework

Multimodal imaging for precision medicine has received significant attention in recent years. In this work, we proposed to combine Cerenkov luminescence imaging (CLI) and SPECT-CT to systematically evaluate the real biodistribution of nanoscale metal-organic framework (MOF) in murine xenograft model. 177Lu was incorporated into nanoscale MOF-76(Eu)/FA in high radiochemical yield to construct a multimodal probe with physiological stability. Subsequently, the 177Lu-MOF-76(Eu)/FA shows adequate in vitro affinity and cytotoxicity to cancer cells. Furthermore, by comparing the SPECT imaging and CLI, we evaluated the feasibility of in vivo CLI application in preclinical studies of 177Lu-radiopharmaceuticals. The results demonstrate that CLI address some limitations of fluorescence imaging based on organic dye molecule and enable accurate tracking 177Lu radiolabeled compounds in major organs.