The Synthesis and In Vivo Pharmacokinetics of Fluorinated Arachidonic Acid: Implications for Imaging Neuroinflammation

Arachidonic acid (AA) is found in high concentrations in brain phospholipids and is released as a second messenger during neurotransmission and much more so during neuroinflammation and excitotoxicity. Upregulated brain AA metabolism associated with neuroinflammation has been imaged in rodents using [1-14C]AA and with PET in Alzheimer disease patients using [1-11C]AA. Radiotracer brain AA uptake is independent of cerebral blood flow, making it an ideal tracer despite altered brain functional activity. However, the 20.4-min radioactive half-life of 11C-AA and challenges of routinely synthesizing 11C fatty acids limit their translational utility as PET biomarkers. Methods As a first step to develop a clinically useful 18F-fluoroarachidonic acid (18F-FAA) with a long radioactive half-life of 109.8 min, we report here a high-yield stereoselective synthetic method of non-radioactive 20-19F-FAA. We tested its in vivo pharmacokinetics by infusing purified nonradioactive 19F-FAA intravenously for 5 min at 2 doses in unanesthetized mice and measured its plasma and brain distribution using gas chromatography–mass spectrometry.