Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 8, Issue 16, 2002

Monoamine neurotransmission is a complicated process with interactions between individual neurotransmitter pathways, multiple receptors with different responses and a variety of feedback loops regulating neurotransmitter synthesis, release, reuptake and effect on receptors. The system is further affected by a range of enzymes with co-factors controlling synthesis and degradation of monoamines.Positron emission tomogra Read More

The evolution of molecular biology has enabled the exploration of novel sophisticated genedirected treating modalities for cancer. Suicide gene therapy - i.e. transfection of a so-called suicide gene that sensitizes target cells towards a prodrug - may offer an attractive approach to treat malignant tumors. For the development of effective clinical suicide gene therapy protocols, a non-invasive method to assay the extent, t Read More

The labelling of single-stranded oligonucleotides with a positron or single-photon emitter can result in valuable radiopharmaceuticals with promising applications for: (i) Imaging of specific mRNAs, i.e. visualisation of the expression of specific genes in vivo (ii) Monitoring of antisense chemotherapy, i.e. measuring the efficiency of efforts to block the expression of specific genes, (iii) Gene radiotherapy, i.e. the targeting Read More

Recent advancements in our understanding of the basic biology of angiogenesis have prompted a focus on practical applications, both in cardiovascular disease and in oncology. The focus on practical applications has stimulated development of novel noninvasive tools that provide serial assessment of ongoing vessel growth in vivo. Nuclear imaging (SPECT, PET) and x-ray angiography have been used to assess chan Read More

Nuclear imaging techniques can provide information about the time course of uptake, the spatial distribution, and the functional effects of a drug in the human body. Recently, PET has also acquired the potential to affect the drug development process during a very early stage, when a drug is undergoing animal testing. The development of dedicated small animal scanners with high resolution has made it possible to assess the Read More

Drug analysis and development with PET should fully exhaust the ability of this tomographic technique to quantify regional tracer concentrations in vivo. Data evaluation based on visual inspection or assessment of regional image contrast is not sufficient for this purpose since much of the information present in dynamically acquired data is not used by these approaches. Compartment modelling of dynamic PET data is gen Read More