Employing nanobodies for immune landscape profiling by PET imaging in mice

Abstract

Summary Noninvasive immunoimaging holds great potential for studying and stratifying disease as well as therapeutic efficacy. Radiolabeled single-domain antibody fragments (i.e., nanobodies) are appealing probes for immune landscape profiling, as they display high stability, rapid targeting, and excellent specificity, while allowing extremely sensitive nuclear readouts. Here, we present a protocol for radiolabeling an anti-CD11b nanobody and studying its uptake in mice by a combination of positron emission tomography imaging, ex vivo gamma counting, and autoradiography. Our protocol is applicable to nanobodies against other antigens. For complete details on the use and execution of this protocol, please see Priem et al. (2020) , Senders et al. (2019) , or Rashidian et al. (2017) .

Regulating trained immunity with nanomedicine

“…immune cell proliferation in this organ can be studied using 18 F-fluorothymidine Pet 197 . Changes in myeloid cell dynamics can be probed by 89 Zr-labelled nanobodies targeting CD11b 198,199 . Many Pet imaging methods and tracers are clinically approved and can therefore be readily implemented in clinical studies and may serve as companion diagnostics for trained-immunity-regulating nanotherapeutics.…”