Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 7, Issue 18, 2001

Positron Emission Tomography (PET) has the potential to improve efficacy of established and novel cancer therapies and to assist more rapid and rational progression of promising novel therapies into the clinic. This is due to PET's unrivalled sensitivity and ability to monitor the pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of drugs and biochemicals radiolabelled with short -lived positron emitting radioisotopes. PET Read More

Enzymes, the expression products of transferred or native genes, offer unique windows of opportunity for clinical diagnosis and therapy. Although some expression products can be monitored in plasma, nuclear medicine imaging (SPECT and PET) offers the unique ability to selectively measure the intensity and regional / spatial distribution of gene expression both in vivo, in situ. Importantly, the superior sensitivity and moderate Read More

A basic problem in the discovery and development of novel drugs to be used in the treatment of neurological and psychiatric disorders is the absence of relevant in vitro or in vivo animal models that can yield results which can be extrapolated to man. Drug research now benefits from the fast development of functional imaging techniques such as positron emission tomography (PET) which trace radiolabelled molecules dir Read More

The only bromine and iodine radioisotopes worth using in PET or SPECT in vivo investigations during the development of a new drug are 76Br and 123I. It is most of the time impossible to isotopically label a drug with 76Br or 123I since the occurrence of drugs having a bromine or an iodine atom within their chemical structure is quite limited. However, by using specific radiobrominated or radioiodinated probes, it is possible t Read More

Radiotracer imaging studies performed on animals have the potential to play a major role in pharmaceutical development, pharmacology studies and basic biochemistry research. Recent developments in instrumentation and imaging metho- dology make it possible to image and quantify the kinetics of radiolabelled pharmaceuticals in a wide range of animal models from rodents to non-human primates. This article reviews th Read More