L’Imagerie par Résonance Magnétique est une des techniques de diagnostic les plus performantes. Parmi les perspectives d’avenir, les applications en imagerie moléculaire avec l’utilisation d’agents de contraste intelligents sensibles à divers paramètres physico-chimiques sont particulièrement attrayantes.Dans cette thèse, nous présentons la synthèse et la caractérisation physico-chimique de nouveaux complexes de lanthanide dans le but de développer des agents de contraste sensibles à l’activité enzymatique ou la présence d’ions calcium. Les premiers complexes sont basés sur le concept de coupler un substrat spécifique à une enzyme par l’intermédiaire d’un bras auto-immolable, à un chélate de lanthanide macrocyclique. Les modifications de structure qui suivent le clivage du substrat et l’autodestruction du bras sont sensées induire des variations de relaxivité ou des propriétés CEST des complexes. Même si nous n'avons pas pu créer des agents de GdIII avec une réponse T1, plusieurs complexes d’YbIII ou d’EuIII montrent un important changement de leurs propriétés CEST après réaction enzymatique. Certains d'entre eux portant un bras dérivé pyridinique peuvent également agir comme des sondes optiques émettant dans le visible ou le proche infrarouge.Nous avons également développé un agent sensible au calcium en combinant un chélate de lanthanide macrocyclique avec une unité d’iminodiacetate permettant la coordination du calcium. Les complexes d’EuIIIet d’YbIII montrent une importante diminution de l’effet CEST en présence de Ca2+. L’utilisation en parallèle des deux complexes permet une approche ratiométrique où la réponse IRM détectée est indépendante de la concentration de l’agent. / Today, Magnetic Resonance Imaging is one of the most powerful diagnostic techniques in the clinics. Amongfuture perspectives, molecular imaging applications based on smart contrast agents which are responsive to various physico-chemical parameters, are particularly attractive. In this work, we present the synthesis and physico-chemical characterisation of novel lanthanide complexes with the aim of developing smart contrast agents for the detection of enzyme activity or calcium concentration.The complexes designed to give an MRI response to an enzyme are based on the original concept of coupling an enzyme-specific substrate to a macrocyclic LnIII chelate via a self-immolative linker. The structural changes following enzymatic cleavage of the substrate and destruction of the self-immolative armare expected to induce variation of the relaxivity or the CEST properties of the LnIII complexes. Though we failed creating GdIII agents with a T1 response upon enzymatic reaction, several YbIII or EuIII complexes were synthesized that provide an important change in their CEST properties. Some of them, bearing a pyridine-derivative arm which is an efficient sensitizer of lanthanide luminescence, act also as enzyme-responsive NIR or visible emitting optical probes.We have developed a Ca-responsive agent combining a DOTA-tetraamide LnIII chelator with animinodiacetate unit for calcium coordination. The EuIII and YbIII complexes show an important decrease in the CEST effect in response to Ca2+. The parallel application of the two complexes allows for ratiometric approaches where the detected MRI response is independent of the concentration of the agent.

A notable need exists for noninvasive tools to increase our mechanistic understanding of disease progression at a cellular and molecular level. Studying the functions of proteins in their innate in vivo tissue environment can provide useful information about pathology enabling appropriate treatment and early diagnosis. Chemical exchange saturation transfer MRI contrast provides real-time functional characterization of the biological landscape and can be used to detect multiple enzyme biomarker activities. A dual-enzyme catalyCEST contrast agent was developed as a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the potential of using a salicylic acid scaffold and control the CEST signal through enzyme activation. In addition, a straightforward route was designed to synthesize a diamagnetic catalyCEST MRI agent that is a substrate for β-galactosidase and β-glucuronidase enzymes. The synthesized agents generated two peaks in the CEST spectrum, at 4.25 ppm corresponding to a carbamate moiety and at 9.25 ppm corresponding to the salicylic acid moiety. Chemical exchange rates of liable protons were determined from a QUESP Hanes-Woolf plot. In the presence of the corresponding enzymes, the catalyCEST agent was activated via saccharide hydrolysis followed by a spontaneous disassembly to produce 4-aminosalicylic acid. This reaction converted the carbamate moiety into a free primary amine, and caused a loss of CEST signal at 4.25 ppm. The CEST signal at 9.25 ppm was unaffected by the enzyme catalysis, and therefore used as an internal control signal. Michaelis-Menten enzyme kinetics studies were performed with CEST MRI to verify that catalyCEST MRI could truly detect enzyme activity. The Michaelis-Menten kinetics constants from MRI studies were compared to the kinetics constants measured with UVvis results from the same contrast agent, demonstrating the quantitative potential of catalyCEST MRI with both contrast agents. These findings demonstrate that the newly synthesized modular agents have the potential to become reliable catalyCEST MRI imaging probes. In addition, the modular design of these agents facilitates the conjugation of other enzyme substrates to the carbamate spacer, so that this approach constitutes a platform technology for the detection of enzyme activity.

This thesis presents specification and implementation of a system for detection of enzymes in metagenomic data. The detection is based on a provided enzyme sequence and its goal is to search the metagenomic sample for its novel variants. In order to guarantee that found enzymes truly have the desired catalytic function, the system employs a number of catalytic function verification methods. Their specification, implementation and evaluation is one of the main contributions of this thesis. Experiments have shown, that proposed methods reach sensitivity as high as 89%, specificity of 95%, values of AUC metric above 0.9 and average throughput of 1,203 verifications per second on regular personal computer. Evaluation of the system also led to discovery of a partial sequence of novel haloalkane dehalogenase enzyme in a metagenomic sample from soil. The implementation is able to work on a personal computer as well as on a grid computing environment.