Hanyang Med Rev.
2007 Nov;27(4):4-15.
New Trend of tumor PET imaging radiopharmaceuticals
- Affiliations
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- 1Department of Nuclear Medicine, Asan Medical Center, University of Ulsan College of Medicine, Seoul, Korea. sjoh@amc.seoul.kr
Abstract
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Tumor PET imaging with radiopharmaceuticals plays a major role in the understanding of tumor biological information and for diagnosis of tumorswith non-invasive methods. These radiopharmaceuticals can be divided into two categories radiopharmaceuticals for metabolic process imaging and for specific receptor imaging. Most tumor imaging radiopharmaceuticals such as [18F]FDG, [18F]FLT, and [11C]choline can be trapped in tumor cells by specific metabolic processes of each radiopharmaceutical and show an increase in metabolism of tumor regions. Unlike these compounds, the hypoxia imaging adiopharmaceuticals such as [18F]FMISO and [64Cu]ATSM are trapped by oxidative metabolic mechanisms under only hypoxic conditions of tumor cells. For tumor specific receptor imaging, [18F]FES for estrogen receptor positive breast cancer may be used and recent clinical results showed the possibility of evaluating tumor therapy responseby estrogen receptor imaging with [18F]FES. This paper gives an overview of the current status of tumor PET imaging adiopharmaceuticals and the development of new lead compounds as potential radiopharmaceuticals by medicinal chemistry.