Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 15, Issue 9, 2009

Radionuclide imaging together with other non-invasive imaging techniques have found a prominent place in the whole drug discovery and development process. The application of imaging has the potential to alter the direction of the development process. The fundamental questions to address are when in the development timeline do you use these imaging techniques and what is the current utilization of these imaging Read More

The advances of nuclear medicine imaging instrumentation and radiopharmaceutical sciences allow their involvement in the developmental processes of therapeutic drugs. New chemical entities, meant as potential drugs, need to comply with the proof- of- principle. Tomographic imaging methods as PET, SPECT and CT have been used for small animal and human studies at an early stage of drug development. Using a dru Read More

Radiopharmaceuticals can provide unique information for drug development also in cardiovascular applications. Radiopharmaceuticals offer possibility to study noninvasively cardiac perfusion, oxygen consumption, oxidative and substrate metabolism, myocardial efficiency of work, neural actions and receptors, vascular inflammation, and molecular processes which all are relevant to understand the effects of drugs. Using t Read More

Inhaled drugs have been recognized for their great potential for improved drug delivery, but so far only a fraction of their potential is benefiting clinical practice. Many new promising drug candidates are in development pipelines and some of them are approaching processes of regulatory agencies. Overall, investigation in inhalation drug development is intense. Inhalation administration route provides benefits over other ro Read More

In the last decade radiotracers have been gradually growing in importance as aids for the development of new drugs. This development has been most pronounced for Psychiatric and Neurologic drugs [1, 2], but has more recently been adapted to the development of drugs against cancer. In this mini-review, we describe how advances in molecular imaging of cancer are likely to lead to advances in development and improved Read More

Oncology remains an increasingly important focus of therapeutic development yet there remain many scientific and operational bottlenecks to deliver optimum treatments efficiently. Radiopharmaceuticals constitute a group of methodologies able to support the many stages of drug development. Methods such as [18F]-FDG-PET continue to have a role, evaluating early metabolic response to treatment and supporting Read More

Determination of individual pharmacokinetics in patients undergoing radiopharmaceutical therapy is essential to define critical normal organ dosimetry. Review of a 20 year single institution experience demonstrates practical methodology for routinely characterising pharmacokinetics in each patient and calculating safe, effective therapeutic activities predicated upon prescribed radiation absorbed doses to the critical org Read More

Imaging of glucose metabolism has resulted in significant improvements in staging and follow-up in oncology. 18F-FDG PET has become a routine clinical test for most solid tumours. Several radionuclide-labeled derivatives of deoxyglucose that have shown that glucose metabolic imaging may be a useful tool for improving tumour staging, restaging, and monitoring of tumour response to therapy.

Physiology based pharmacokinetic (PBPK) modeling and simulation is a useful method for prediction of biodistribution of both macromolecules and small molecules. It can enhance our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of biodistribution and hence may help in rational design of macromolecules used as diagnostic and therapeutic agents. In this review we discuss PBPK modeling and simulation of a radiolabelled M Read More

Neuropathic pain affects 26 million patients worldwide resulting in a worldwide healthcare cost over $ 3 billion per year. Despite the availability of an impressive arsenal of powerful drugs for the effective management of pain, there remains a great medical need for new medicines to treat pain. While little is known about the proteins that detect noxious stimuli (especially those of a physical nature), vanilloid receptor, an exci Read More

Although remarkable therapeutic advances in the treatment of cardiometabolic disorders have been made with current therapeutic options, cardiovascular disease (CVD) is still a leading cause of mortality and morbidity in the Western world. Therefore, to develop a novel therapeutic strategy is needed for the prevention of cardiovascular disease (CVD) in high-risk patients for atherosclerosis. Recently, we, along with o Read More