Polymeric dipicolylamine based mass tags for mass cytometry

In this technique, cells are stained with metal-isotope-tagged antibodies and are analyzed by an inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometer. While there are more than 100 stable isotopes available in the m/z 75 to 209 detection range of the instrument, only about 50 parameters can be measured per cell because current reagents are metal-chelating polymers with pendan aminocarboxylate chelators that only bind hard metal ions such as the rare earths and Bi3+.

The data presented here describes the synthesis and characterization of a new type of metal-chelating polymer with pendant dipicolylamine chelators suited to binding intermediate to soft metals such as rhenium and platinum. We introduce two different conjugation strategies, a thiol-maleimide reaction that works well for rhenium, and a DBCO-azide click reaction designed to avoid potential complications of Pt and other heavy metals interacting with thiol groups.