Research into developing dual modality probes enabled for magnetic resonanceimaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET) has been on the riserecently due to the potential to combine the high resolution of MRI and thehigh sensitivity of PET. Current synthesis techniques for developing multimodalprobes is largely hindered in part by prolonged reaction times duringradioisotope incorporation - leading to a weakening of the radioactivity. Alongwith a time-efficient synthesis, the resulting products must fit within acritical size range (between 20-100nm) to increase blood retention time. Inthis work, we describe a novel, rapid, microwave-based synthesis technique togrow dextran-coated iron oxide nanoparticles doped with copper (DIO/Cu).Traditional methods for coprecipitation of dextran-coated iron oxidenanoparticles require refluxing for 2 hours and result in approximately 50 nmdiameter particles. We demonstrate that microwave synthesis can produce 50 nmnanoparticles with 5 minutes of heating. We discuss the various parameters usedin the microwave synthesis protocol to vary the size distribution of DIO/Cu,and demonstrate the successful incorporation of 64Cu into these particles withthe aim of future use for dual-mode MR/PET imaging.
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