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ObjectivesIt is necessary to develop a high-performance and biocompatible contrast agent to accurately diagnose various diseases via in vivo computed tomography (CT) imaging. Here, we synthesized a small molecular Bi-DOTA complex as a high-performance contrast agent for in vitro and in vivo CT bioimaging.Materials and MethodsIn our study, Bi-DOTA was fabricated through a facile and one-pot synthesis strategy. The formed Bi-DOTA complex was characterized via different techniques. Furthermore, Bi-DOTA was used for in vitro and in vivo CT bioimaging to verify its X-ray attenuation ability, especially in vivo kidney imaging, gastrointestinal tract CT imaging, and spectral CT imaging.ResultsA small molecular Bi-DOTA complex with a molecular mass of 0.61 kDa was synthesized successfully, which exhibited outstanding dispersion, good biocompatibility, and superior X-ray attenuation ability. Meanwhile, we showed that the obtained contrast agent was quite biocompatible and safe in the given concentration range as confirmed by in vitro and in vivo cytotoxicity assay. Also, the proposed contrast agent can be rapidly excreted from the body via the urinary system, avoiding the potential side effects caused by long-term retention in vivo. Importantly, Bi-DOTA was successfully used in high-quality in vitro CT imaging, in vivo kidney imaging, gastrointestinal tract CT imaging, and spectral CT imaging.ConclusionsThese superiorities allowed Bi-DOTA to be used as an efficient CT contrast agent and laid down a new way of designing high-performance CT contrast agents with great clinical transformation potential.

Tea is one of the most consumed beverages worldwide. The healthy effects of tea are attributed to a wealthy of different chemical components from tea. Thousands of studies on the chemical constituents of tea had been reported. However, data from these individual reports have not been collected into a single database. The lack of a curated database of related information limits research in this field, and thus a cohesive database system should necessarily be constructed for data deposit and further application. The Tea Metabolome database (TMDB), a manually curated and web-accessible database, was developed to provide detailed, searchable descriptions of small molecular compounds found in Camellia spp. esp. in the plant Camellia sinensis and compounds in its manufactured products (different kinds of tea infusion). TMDB is currently the most complete and comprehensive curated collection of tea compounds data in the world. It contains records for more than 1393 constituents found in tea with information gathered from 364 published books, journal articles, and electronic databases. It also contains experimental 1H NMR and 13C NMR data collected from the purified reference compounds or collected from other database resources such as HMDB. TMDB interface allows users to retrieve tea compounds entries by keyword search using compound name, formula, occurrence, and CAS register number. Each entry in the TMDB contains an average of 24 separate data fields including its original plant species, compound structure, formula, molecular weight, name, CAS registry number, compound types, compound uses including healthy benefits, reference literatures, NMR, MS data, and the corresponding ID from databases such as HMDB and Pubmed. Users can also contribute novel regulatory entries by using a web-based submission page. The TMDB database is freely accessible from the URL of http://pcsb.ahau.edu.cn:8080/TCDB/index.jsp . The TMDB is designed to address the broad needs of tea biochemists, natural products chemists, nutritionists, and members of tea related research community. The TMDB database provides a solid platform for collection, standardization, and searching of compounds information found in tea. As such this database will be a comprehensive repository for tea biochemistry and tea health research community.