Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 18, Issue 8, 2012

Nuclear medicine is an intrinsically molecular technology because it often needs the use of radiolabelled molecular probes to collect information from a special biological target. In contrast to morphological imaging procedures like computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the use of ‘magic’ radiopharmaceuticals for the imaging of the biochemical changes that come with any disease has allowed nucl Read More

Molecular imaging is a fast growing field in biomedical research. The discovery, development and continual improvement of molecular probes are important for ongoing research efforts in molecular imaging. Human serum albumin (HSA) offers favorable charac-teristics and opportunities as a platform protein for molecular imaging probe discovery and optimization. It has many advantages, includ-ing alternation of biodistributi Read More

Angiogenesis is necessary for tumor growth, without which a tumor can not grow beyond a few millimeters in diameter. This review summarizes the current status on the research of peptide Arg-Gly-Asp (RGD) and Arg-Arg-Leu (RRL) as well as its derivatives applied in tumor angiogenesis imaging and targeted therapy with single photon emission tomography (SPECT) and positron emissiontomography (PET). Peptide RGD se Read More

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the main cause of death and remains a major health problem worldwide. Myocardial perfu-sion imaging is a well established noninvasive method for assessing CAD. This review summarizes the development of various ra-diotracers for myocardial perfusion imaging, including single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) perfusion imaging agents and positron emission tomography ( Read More

Frequent overexpression of the folate receptor (FR) on a variety of tumor types and on activated macrophages makes this re-ceptor an interesting target for both imaging and therapy of cancer and inflammation. The FR is a glycosylphophatidylinositol-anchored protein that binds the vitamin folic acid with high affinity and internalizes it via endocytosis. In normal tissues and organs, FR-expression is restricted to only a few sites Read More

Hypoxic tissue exists in most of the solid tumors and hypoxia is a common character of these tumors. The existence of hy-poxic tissue in the tumor decreases the efficacy of radiotherapy and chemotherapy. Radiolabeled hypoxia markers have been developed to measure the hypoxic tissue together with non-invasive imaging techniques such as PET, SPECT, and PET/CT. This offers a conven-ient approach to delineate the tum Read More

Infectious diseases remain a major health problem and cause of death worldwide. A variety of radiopharmaceuticals are used for the imaging of infections and inflammation in the practice of nuclear medicine. Long-term clinical use has shown that the majority of radiolabeled probes cannot distinguish between inflammation and infection. Gallium-67-citrate binds to bacteria, but also to proteins ac-cumulating at both sterile in Read More

Neurodegenerative diseases are some of the most fearsome illnesses, which include common disorders such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, and other rarer as Hungtinton's disease, spinocerebellar ataxia, prion diseases, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. In spite of the diversity in clinical manifestation, neurodegenerative disorders share some common features such as their appearance late in life, the progressive and chr Read More

Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's disease are complex neurodegenerative conditions with high prevalence character-ized by protein misfolding and deposition in the brain. Considerable progress has been made in the last two decades in identifying the genes and proteins responsible for several human ‘proteinopathies’. A wide variety of wild type and mutant proteins associated with neu-rodegenerative co Read More

The senescence accelerate mouse P8 (SAMP8) is an excellent model of early learning and memory problems. A number of studies have shown that it has cholinergic deficits, oxidative damage, alterations in membrane lipids and circadian rhythm disturbances. The brains of the SAMP8 overproduce amyloid precursor protein (APP), amyloid-beta protein and have an increased physphorylation of tau. An antisense to APP Read More

Alzheimer disease (AD) is the leading cause of dementia among elderly. Currently, no effective treatment is available for AD. Analysis of transgenic mouse models of AD has facilitated our understanding of disease mechanisms and provided valuable tools for evaluating potential therapeutic strategies. In this review, we will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of current mouse models of AD and the contribution towards un Read More

Neurodegenerative diseases (NDs) are some of the most debilitating human illnesses. Research over the past 10 years has pro-vided evidence for a common mechanism of neurodegeneration in which the critical event is the brain accumulation of misfolded protein aggregates. Although it is well established that misfolded proteins play an important role in these diseases, the mechanisms by which they cause cellular and tissue dy Read More

Nonhuman primates are useful for the study of age-associated changes in the brain and behavior in a model that is biologically proximal to humans. The Aβ and tau proteins, two key players in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD), are highly homologous among primates. With age, all nonhuman primates analyzed to date develop senile (Aβ) plaques and cerebral β-amyloid angiopathy. In contrast, significant tau Read More

Engineering of Conotoxins for the Treatment of Pain Pp.4242-4253; Bodil B. Carstens, Richard J. Clark, Norelle L. Daly, Peta J. Harvey, Quentin Kaas and David J. Craik. Current Pharmaceutical Design, Vol. 17 (38), 2011. The figure 4 in the above stated publication was inadvertently published incorrectly owing to a production error. Below is the correct version with the legend reproduced for convenience. The electronic version Read More