Efforts towards PET-activatable red-shifted silicon rhodamines and silicon pyronine dyes

Tracers for bimodal optical imaging and positron emission tomography unite multiple ad-vantages in a single molecule. Their tumor-specific uptake can be visualized after their PET-activation by radiofluorination via PET/CT or PET/MRI allowing for staging or therapy planning, while their non-radioactive moiety additionally facilitates the visualization of malig-nant tissue during intraoperative fluorescence-guided surgery or in histological assessments. The silicon-bridged xanthene core offers the opportunity for radiofluorination with SiFA isotope exchange to obtain a small molecule PET-activatable NIR dye that can be linked to different tar-get vectors. Herein, we demonstrate the PET-activation of a fluorinated silicon pyronine, be-longing to a class of low-molecular weight fluorescence dyes with a large Stokes shift and sol-vent-dependent NIR dye properties, with successful radiochemical conversion. Moreover, a li-brary of unusually functionalized, red-shifted silicon rhodamines was synthesized, which can be easily conjugated by amide bond formation or ‘click-reaction’ approaches.