Complexity of αvβ6-integrin targeting RGD peptide trimers: emergence of non-specific binding by synergistic interaction

Multimerization is an established strategy to design bioactive macromolecules with enhanced avidity, which has been widely employed to increase the target-specific binding and uptake of imaging probes and pharmaceuticals. However, the factors governing the general biodistribution of multimeric probes are less well understood but are nonetheless decisive for their clinical application. We found that regiospecific exchange of phenylalanine by tyrosine (chemically equivalent to addition of single oxygen atoms) can have an unexpected, dramatic impact on the in vivo behavior of gallium-68 labeled αvβ6-integrin binding peptides trimers. For example, introduction of one and two Tyr, equivalent to just 1 and 2 additional oxygens and molecular weight increases of 0.38% and 0.76% for our >4 kDa constructs, reduced non-specific liver uptake by 50% and 72%, respectively. The observed effect did not correlate to established polarity measures such as log D, and generally defies explanation by reductionist approaches. We conclude that multimers should be viewed not just as molecular combinations of peptides whose properties simply add up, but as whole entities with higher intrinsic complexity and thus a strong tendency to exhibit newly emerged properties that, on principle, cannot be predicted from the characteristics of the monomers used.