Application of highly sensitive UPLC-MS to determine biodistribution at tracer doses: validation with the 5-HT1A ligand [(18)F]FPWAY.

High-sensitivity and high-resolution LC/MS instrumentation has been applied in positron emission tomography (PET) radiopharmaceutical development to provide quantitative measurement of the mass of radiotracers extracted from tissues of rats. We employed the highly sensitive Waters Q-TOF premier MS coupled with an Acquity UPLC system to demonstrate that LC-MS can generate ex vivo biodistribution data for PET 5-HT(1A) ligand FPWAY without the need to radiolabel. For the biodistribution studies, we injected rats with [(18)F]FPWAY containing various amounts of nonradioactive FPWAY. At the end of the allotted time, the animals were killed and six regions of brain and plasma from each animal were processed for quantitative measurement of parent compound concentration by LC-MS. These data were then converted to the differential uptake ratio DUR (%ID/g*body weight/100) and the brain tissue-specific binding ratio to allow direct comparison with data obtained by gamma counting of the coinjected radioactive [(18)F]FPWAY. The DUR and the brain tissue-specific binding ratio calculated using the LC-MS method were highly correlated to the values obtained by standard radioactivity measurements of [(18)F]FPWAY. In conclusion, there was significant concordance between the LC/MS and radioactivity method in determination of DUR and the specific binding ratio in the rat brain. This concordance indicated that high-sensitivity LC/MS is an indispensable tool in evaluating the quantity of administered chemical in tissue as part of the development of new molecular imaging probes.