Chloroquine and Lopinavir (COVID-19 Drug Candidates) Signal Amplification by Reversible Exchange

To overcome the recent coronavirus pneumonia (COVID-19), several drug candidates are suggested and tested for the latest clinical treatment. Chloroquine and lopinavir are showing definite effects after treatment. To understand more about those roles in molecular level and future application on NMR/MRI, hyperpolarization technique can open new opportunities in the diagnosis and biomedical researches to cope with COVID-19. SABRE-based hyperpolarization studies on those two drug candidates are carried out and we observed hyperpolarized proton signals from the whole structures, which can be possible by unprecedented long-distance polarization transfer by para-hydrogen. Base on this result, future work on isotope labeling, and further polarization transfer on long T1 time nuclei including clinical perspectives will open a new door for overcoming this dreadful catastrophe.