Affibody molecules are small engineered scaffold proteins suitable for in vivo tumor targeting. Radionuclide molecular imaging using directly radiolabelled affibody molecules provides excellent imaging. However, affibody molecules have a high renal reabsorption, which complicates their use for radionuclide therapy. The high renal reabsorption is a common problem for the use of engineered scaffold proteins for radionuclide therapy. Affibody-based PNA-mediated pretargeting reduces dramatically the absorbed dose to the kidneys and makes affibody-based radionuclide therapy possible. This methodology might, hopefully, solve the problem of high renal reabsorption for radionuclide therapy mediated by other engineered scaffold proteins.
Keywords: 111In; 177Lu; 57Co; 68Ga; Affibody molecules; PNA; Peptide synthesis; Pretargeting; Scaffold protein; Sortase A.