I would also like to thank all my collaborators whom their great help have made this dissertation what it is. I would like to thank Dr. Cheppail Ramachandran from the Department of Pathology at Nicklaus Children's Hospital for studying the cytostatic activities of my 4-N-modified gemcitabine analogues in his L1210 cell line. Also, thank you to Dr. Alejandro Barbieri at FIU's department of Biological Sciences for providing cell and fluorescence studies with his HEK 293 cell line in order to have a better understanding of cellular uptake on my 4-N-modified gemcitabine analogues. A very special and appreciated thank you to Dr. Michael van Dam and his coworkers from the Crump Institute for Molecular Imaging in the University of California Los Angeles for their work in 18 F labeling and PET imaging of my 4-N-modified gemcitabine analogues in WT C57BL/6 mice. Finally, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Stanislaw F. Wnuk, for all his guidance and always keeping my in the right track. I would like to thank all of my lab mates, previous and current, for their advice and friendship. vi