Engineering of Affibody molecules for Radionuclide Molecular Imaging and Intracellular Targeting

Affibody molecules are small (-7 kDa) affinity proteins of non-immunoglobulin origin that have been generated to specifically interact with a large number of clinically important molecular targets. In this thesis, Affibody molecules have been employed as tracers for radionuclide molecular imaging of HER2and IGF-1R-expressing tumors, paper I-IV, and for surface knockdown of EGFR, paper V. In paper I, a tag with the amino acid sequence HEHEHE was fused to the N-terminus of a HER2-specific Affibody molecule, (ZHER2), and was shown to enable facile IMAC purification and efficient tri-carbonyl 99mTc-labeling. In vivo evaluation of radioactivity uptake in different organs showed an improved biodistribution, including a 10-fold lower radioactivity uptake in liver, compared to the same construct with a H6-tag. In paper II, it was further shown that an N-terminally placed HEHEHEtag on ZHER2 provided lower unspecific uptake of radioactivity in liver compared to its H6tagged counterpart even when radiolabeling was at the C-terminus using alternative chemistries to attach 99mTc, 111In or 125I. In paper III, the H6-tag’s composition and position was varied with regards to charge, hydrophobicity and its Cor N-terminal placement on ZHER2. Among the ten variants investigated, it was found that an N-terminal HEHEHE-tag provided the most favorable overall biodistribution profile and that introduction of hydrophobic and positively charged amino acids provoked liver uptake of radioactivity. In paper IV, the HEHEHE-tag was shown to enable IMAC purification and tri-carbonyl 99mTc-labeling of an IGF-1R-specific Affibody molecule and improved its overall biodistribution when compared to the same construct with a H6-tag. In paper V, the aim was to develop an intracellular receptor-entrapment system to reduce the surface levels of EGFR. An EGFR-specific Affibody molecule was expressed as a fusion to different mutants of an intracellular transport protein in SKOV-3 cells, resulting in a collection of cell lines with 50%, 60%, 80% and 96% reduced surface level of EGFR. Analysis of the proliferation rate of these cell lines showed that a modest reduction (15%) in proliferation occurs between 60% and 80% reduction of the surface level of EGFR.