RESEARCH PAPER Synthesis and biodistribution of novel magnetic- poly(HEMA–APH) nanopolymer radiolabeled with iodine- 131 and investigation its fate in vivo for cancer therapy Ug ˘ur Avcıbas ¸ ı • Nesibe Avcıbas ¸ ı • Hilmi Arkut Akalın • Melis Ediz • Hasan Demirog ˘lu • Fikriye Gu ¨l Gu ¨mu ¨s ¸er • Emir O ¨ zc ¸alıs ¸kan • Ceren Tu ¨ rkcan • Deniz Aktas ¸ Uygun • Sinan Akgo ¨l Received: 29 May 2013 / Accepted: 18 September 2013 / Published online: 27 September 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract Herein, we investigated the biological uptake, distribution, and radiopharmaceutical potential of a novel molecule based on 2-hydroxyethyl methac- rylate (HEMA) and anilinephtalein (APH) in the metabolism of Albino Wistar rats. In order to achieve this, we synthesized APH using organic synthesis methods and copolymerized APH with HEMA using a common polymerization method, surfactant-free emulsion polymerization. In the presence of Fe 3 O 4 particles, we obtained a new generation magnetic- nano-scale polymer, magnetic-poly(HEMA–APH). This new molecule was chemically identified and approved by several characterization methods using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive X-ray spec- troscopy, electron spin resonance, atomic force micro- scope, and Zeta particle-size analysis. To evaluate the biological activity in live metabolism and anti-cancer potential of mag-poly(HEMA–APH), molecule was radioiodinated by a widely used labeling technique, iodogen method, with a gamma diffuser radionuclide, 131 I. Thin-layer radiochromatography experiments demonstrated that 131 I binded to nanopolymer with the labeling yield of 90 %. Lipophilicity and stability experiments were conducted to determine the condi- tion of cold and labeled mag-poly(HEMA–APH) in rat blood and lipid medium. Results demonstrated that radioiodinated molecule stayed as an intact complex in rat metabolism for 24 h and experimental lipophilicity was determined as 0.12 ± 0.02. In vivo results obtained by imaging and biological distribution exper- iments indicated that mag-poly(HEMA–APH) labeled Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s11051-013-2021-7) contains supple- mentary material, which is available to authorized users. U. Avcıbas ¸ ı (&) Á H. A. Akalın Á M. Ediz Á H. Demirog ˘lu Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Science, Celal Bayar University, 45030 Manisa, Turkey e-mail: uguravcibasi@yahoo.com; ugur.avcibasi@cbu.edu.tr N. Avcıbas ¸ ı Ege Higher Vocational School, Ege University, 35100 Izmir, Turkey F. G. Gu ¨mu ¨s ¸er Department of Nuclear Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Celal Bayar University, 45030 Manisa, Turkey E. O ¨ zc ¸alıs ¸kan Á C. Tu ¨rkcan Á S. Akgo ¨l Department of Biochemistry, Faculty of Science, Ege University, 35100 Izmir, Turkey D. A. Uygun Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Arts and Science, Adnan Menderes University, Aydın, Turkey 123 J Nanopart Res (2013) 15:2021 DOI 10.1007/s11051-013-2021-7