ARTIFICIAL METALLOPROTEINS FOR USE AS MRI CONTRAST AGENTS

The aim of this project is the development of new and improved Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) contrast agents (CAs) based on designed coiled-coil metalloproteins. Previously the group has reported the design of MB1 series of gadolinium-coiled coils and showed a significant increase in relaxivity. Based on these findings, novel peptide scaffolds will be designed to obtain a high degree of stability, lower toxicity with enhanced relaxivity.
The strategies will include designing binding sites which provide stabile coordination for specific paramagnetic metal ions and increasing the percentage of folding by exploring different amino acid sequences. After this, the enhancement of relaxivity for each structure will be assessed, studied and compared. Moreover, new contrast agents will be developed for paraCEST (paramagnetic Chemical Exchange Saturation transfer) imaging, a technique capable of imaging compounds at concentrations that are too low to affect the contrast of standard MRI.