[11 C]Rhodamine-123: Synthesis and biodistribution in rodents

Introduction Rhodamine-123 is a known substrate for the efflux transporter, P-glycoprotein (P-gp). We wished to assess whether rhodamine-123 might serve as a useful substrate for developing probes for imaging efflux transporters in vivo with positron emission tomography (PET). For this purpose, we aimed to label rhodamine-123 with carbon-11 (t1/2 = 20.4 min) and to study its biodistribution in rodents.