UCSF

Redox cycling of iron powers various enzyme functions crucial for life, making the study of iron acquisition, storage, and disposition in the whole organism a worthy topic of inquiry. However, despite its important role in biology and disease, imaging iron in animals with oxidation-state specificity remains an outstanding problem in biology and medicine. Here we report a first-generation reactivity-based probe of labile ferrous iron suitable for positron emission tomography studies in live animals. The responses of this reagent to systemic changes in labile iron disposition were revealed using iron supplementation and sequestration treatments in mice, while the potential of this approach for in vivo imaging of cancer was demonstrated using genetically and pathologically diverse mouse models, including spontaneous tumors arising in a genetically engineered model of prostate cancer driven by loss of PTEN.