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Basic Science Investigations |
1 Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, New York, New York
2 Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, Scotland
3 Radioisotopes and Irradiation Services, Studsvik Nuclear AB, Nyküping, Sweden
| ABSTRACT |
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Key Words: apoptosis Bolton-Hunter chemistry annexin V iodination
| INTRODUCTION |
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Blankenberg et al. (4) have applied annexin V to the in vivo imaging of apoptosis by labeling annexin V with 99mTc. With this technique, they have been able to image apoptosis in murine lymphoma, in rat coronary grafts (5), in rats rejecting lung transplants (6), and in mouse livers after anti-FAS treatment (7). In humans, 99mTc-annexin V localizes to the kidney and liver (8).
To extend the use of annexin V to PET, it would be very desirable to iodinate the molecule. 124I has a relatively long half-life (4.18 d) for a positron emitter and is relatively easy to make compared with 94Tc. Lahorte et al. (9,10) have shown the feasibility of iodinating annexin V with immobilized N-chlorobenzenesulfonamide (IODO-BEADS; Pierce, Rockford, IL). In this article, we examine the biodistribution in mice of IODO-BEADS-labeled annexin V and compare it with a Bolton-Hunter-labeled compound.
| MATERIALS AND METHODS |
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Iodination of Annexin V with IODO-BEADS
Na125I was neutralized before use with an equivalent volume of 3 µmol/L phosphoric acid. Annexin V was iodinated as described by Lahorte et al. (9). Two beads were washed with phosphate-buffered saline (PBS) and dried on filter paper. They were added to 18.5 MBq Na125I in 30 µL PBS for 5 min, when 50 µg annexin V were added in 100 µL of 0.1 mol/L phosphate (pH 6.5). The reaction was allowed to proceed for 10 min, the IODO-BEADS were removed, and the annexin was purified on an NAP-5 column (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech, Piscataway, NJ).
Iodination with IODO-GEN
Fifty micrograms of annexin V were dissolved in 1 mL of 0.1 mol/L phosphate buffer (pH 7.4) and reacted with 37 MBq Na125I in a V-vial (2-mL capacity; Pierce), the inner surface of which was coated with 100 µg 1,3,4,6-tetrachloro-3
6
-diphenylglycouril (IODO-GEN; Pierce). After gentle agitation of the vial for 15 min, the solution was removed from the vial, the vial was rinsed with 100 mL phosphate buffer, and the total solution was passed through a Millipore vented filter containing 1 g of Dowex 1 x 8, 100200 mesh, chloride (Bio-Rad, Hercules, CA).
Iodination with Water-Soluble Bolton-Hunter Reagent
The reaction was performed in a glass vial because labeled annexin would adhere to the walls of polypropylene tubes. Water-soluble Bolton-Hunter reagent was dissolved in dimethyl sulfoxide at 1.5 mmol/L (0.55 mg/mL). Ten microliters of chloramine-T (5 mg/mL in PBS) were added to Na125I (37 MBq) neutralized as above, in 10 µL PBS, followed by 1 µL water-soluble Bolton-Hunter reagent. The reaction was allowed to proceed for 1 min, stopped by the addition of 10 µL sodium metabisulfite (12 mg/mL in PBS), and immediate addition of the annexin (50 µg protein in 0.5 mol/L borate [pH 9.2]). After 1 h the reaction was stopped by the addition of 300 µL of 0.2 mol/L glycine in 0.2 mol/L borate (pH 8.0). Annexin V was purified by spinning repeatedly through a Microcon concentrator (Millipore, Bedford, MA). The same procedure was used to label BSA with 131I, except that after labeling the BSA was dialyzed overnight against 0.5% BSA in PBS.
Affinity Purification of Active Annexin V
For all in vivo experiments, iodinated annexin V was further purified as follows. PS was immobilized in polyacrylamide as described by Uchida and Filburn (11). Five milligrams PS and 25 mg cholesterol were dissolved in chloroform in a glass scintillation vial. The chloroform was evaporated under N2, and 0.5 mL ethanol was added. The vial was placed in boiling water and swirled to disperse the lipids. Five milliliters of 15% acrylamide/5% bisacrylamide solution were added. This was added to a glass test tube and polymerized with 50 µL ammonium persulfate (140 mg/mL) and 2.5 µL N,N,N',N'-tetramethylethylenediamine (TEMED). The glass tube was broken, the gel was washed with deionized H2O, minced with a razor blade, and homogenized in 2030 mL water. The acrylamide was allowed to settle, the water was removed, and the homogenization was repeated.
Two hundred microliters of PS-polyacrylamide (equivalent to approximately 100 µg of PS) were loaded into a 2-mL column(Bio-Rad). The PS-polyacrylamide was washed 3 times with 1 mL of 10 mmol/L Tris (pH 7.5), 2 mmol/L CaCl2, and 0.5% BSA, and the annexin was added in the same buffer. The first run-through was reapplied to the column, and the column was washed 4 times with 1 mL of 10 mmol/L Tris (pH 7.5), 2 mmol/L CaCl2, and 0.5% BSA. Bound annexin was eluted by washing the column 3 times with 0.33 mL of 10 mmol/L Tris (pH 7.5), 5 mmol/L ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA), and 0.5% BSA. The annexin released was separated from EDTA using Microcon concentrators.
Binding of Annexin V In Vitro
Human neuroblastoma IMR32 cells were irradiated with 5 Gy. Sixteen hours later, the detached cells were collected. This population was found to be entirely apoptotic, as judged by Hoechst staining and ultraviolet microscopy. Cells were exposed to annexin V in cell culture medium (DMEM + 10% FBS) for 30 min at room temperature in a volume of 100 µL. Cells were pelleted, and 50 µL of supernatant were removed. This binding assay was also performed using immobilized PS in place of cells. The tubes were counted on an LKB Wallac
-counter (Amersham Pharmacia Biotech). The proportion of activity in the pellet was calculated as (AP - AS)/(AP + AS), where AP is the activity in the tube containing the pellet and half of the supernatant, and AS is the activity in the tube containing supernatant alone. Reactions were conducted using 105 and 3 x 105 cells per tube or 10 and 30 µg PS to ensure that binding fractions below unity were not caused by saturation of binding sites.
Animal Procedures
C3H mice were purchased from Jackson Laboratories (Bar Harbor, ME) and housed in Memorial Sloan Ketterings animal facility. Annexin V was injected via the tail vein. Before scanning, the mice were anesthetized with ketamine/xylazine (15 µg/g and 10 µg/g, respectively) injected intraperitoneally. Whole-body irradiations (5 Gy) were performed on a Shepherd irradiator (JL Shepherd, Glendale, CA) with a 137Cs source and a dose rate of 2.5 Gy/min. Anti-FAS antibody was injected via the tail vein at 5 µg per mouse.
Imaging and Counting Activity
The mice were imaged on a single face of a Vertex gamma camera (ADAC Laboratories, Milpitas, CA) with the collimator removed. The grids used in this study were of a 6:1 ratio, 24 lines per centimeter with a focal range of 75 cm (but effectively unfocused when used under our geometry). The grids were placed in direct contact with the NaI detector and the mice were arranged directly on the scatter grids, with only a thin chuck laid between to prevent grid and crystal contamination. The use of scatter grids in place of a low-energy, high-resolution collimator was to increase sensitivity, enabling us to image mice with much lower activities of 125I, within the constraints imposed by the duration (approximately 2030 min) of ketamine/xylazine anesthetic. The crossed steel mesh serves to provide collimation for the 25- to 35.5-keV x-ray and
-ray photons emitted by 125I. The absence of collimation results in an image from which the distribution of the 125I within the mouse cannot be determined.
The anesthetized mice were placed prone with limbs extended directly on x-ray grids on the camera crystal face. Scans were performed for 20 min with a 50% energy window centered at 28 keV to capture x-rays and
-rays in the energy range of 2135 keV.
After the mice were killed, organs were removed and the radioactivity was counted. In experiments in which the animals had been co-injected with 125I and 131I, the 2-window counting technique was used. Counts in the 125I window for each organ were corrected for downscatter from the 131I activity. The counts per organ were also corrected for the injected activity of each isotope, taken as activity in the syringe before injection minus activity in the syringe after injection.
Assessment of Apoptosis
Upon killing the mice, spleens were removed, mounted in OCT medium (Sakura Fine Tek, Torrance, Ca), frozen, and sectioned. The terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick-end labeling (TUNEL) assay was performed as follows. Sections were fixed in 3.7% formaldehyde at room temperature for 30 min and then washed in PBS for 3 x 10 min. Endogenous peroxidase was blocked by soaking in ice-cold methanol with 0.3% H2O2 for 30 min. Sections were washed again in PBS and permeabilized with 0.1% Triton X-100 (Sigma) in 0.1% citrate for 2 min on ice. The sections were washed with PBS, and avidin-binding sites were blocked using an avidin/biotin blocking kit according to the manufacturers protocol. For labeling, sections were exposed to 50 µL of reaction mix: 5 U terminal transferase in reaction buffer with 2.5 mmol/L CoCl2 and 1 µmol/L biotin-16-dUTP. Sections were incubated for 1 h at 37°C and washed with PBS. Sections were exposed to an avidin-biotin-horseradish peroxidase complex for 30 min, washed with PBS, and exposed to diaminobenzidine and NiCl2 stain.
| RESULTS |
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Iodination of Annexin V with Water-Soluble Bolton-Hunter Reagent
Annexin V was labeled with iodine in a 2-step reaction. The iodine was reacted with the Bolton-Hunter reagent, followed by addition of the iodinated reagent to annexin V. Although 125I-labeled Bolton-Hunter reagent is commercially available, our aim was to devise a method that could be applied to 124I.
The reaction was optimized for pH and temperature. Figure 2 shows their effect on labeling efficiency and annexin V activity. The efficiency of the labeling reaction is seen to increase with increasing pH. On the basis of 3 independent experiments, at pH 8.1 the incorporation is 0.26, rising to 0.35 at pH 8.6 and to 0.41 at pH 9.2. Using a 2-tailed t test, these differences are all statistically significant (pH 8.1 vs. pH 8.6, P = 0.015; pH 8.6 vs. pH 9.2, P = 0.012). The binding activity of the labeled product to PS is 0.8 over this pH range.
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| DISCUSSION |
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Annexin V was labeled to a specific activity of 110220 kBq/µg, which is equivalent to 1 iodine per 10 molecules of annexin V. Annexin V and the Bolton-Hunter reagent were present at equimolar amounts (i.e., 1.5 nmol per reaction), whereas the iodine (37 MBq 125I) was present at 0.5 nmol. Increasing the iodine in the reaction could clearly raise the specific activity. Because the Bolton-Hunter reagent can accept 2 iodine atoms, the activity could be raised to 222 MBq, before a corresponding increase in Bolton-Hunter reagent would also be necessary.
The labeled annexin retains its biologic activity. We measured the binding of labeled annexin V using apoptotic cells and PS immobilized in polyacrylamide. Surprisingly, the estimate of the active fraction was always lower when the measurement was conducted on cells (50% vs. 75%), as can be seen by comparing Figures 2B and 3. We are not sure why this should be so: Possibly, in the cell preparation, the annexin V is subject to proteolytic attack or some other form of inhibition. Regardless of which substrate was used, labeled annexin V binding was dependent on Ca2+, indicating that the protein had retained its biologic activity. We were able to further enhance the active fraction of the labeled protein by applying it to a column containing PS.
The labeled annexin was active in vivo. After irradiation, we found a 4-fold increase in 125I uptake in the spleen relative to that of the control animals. We believe that this finding was associated with annexin V binding apoptotic cells because the TUNEL assay showed the induction of apoptosis in the irradiated spleen. No increase in the BSA uptake in the irradiated spleen was found, ruling out the possibility that increased annexin V uptake was caused by some nonspecific change in protein retention in the irradiated animals.
99mTc-Annexin V localizes in the kidneys of control animals, to such an extent that the kidneys are clearly visible on scans, with minimal activity elsewhere (7). With Bolton-Hunter-labeled annexin V, we did not observe such clear-cut localization to the kidneys (Fig. 6). Instead, a more diffuse pattern of uptake in the visceral region was found. We measured uptake for liver and kidney in terms of activity per gram. Although we found approximately 4 times more activity in the kidney than in the liver, with 99mTc-labeled annexin V, the ratio of kidney-to-liver activity was >10 (7). These differences may be associated with the different linkers used. The Bolton-Hunter reagent will tend to make the complex quite lipid soluble, leading to higher liver uptake and, subsequently, increased gut activity. In contrast, the hydrazinonicotinamide linker used by Blankenberg et al (7) is less lipid soluble and has been shown to significantly reduce liver uptake compared with that of other 99mTc linkers (15).
| CONCLUSION |
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| ACKNOWLEDGMENTS |
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| FOOTNOTES |
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For correspondence contact: James Russell, PhD, Department of Medical Physics, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, S1136, 1275 York Ave., New York, NY 10021.
E-mail russellj{at}mskcc.org
| REFERENCES |
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