PET radiotracers for whole-body in vivo molecular imaging of prostatic neuroendocrine malignancies

PET/CT and Conventional Imaging for the Assessment of Neuroendocrine Prostate Cancer: A Systematic Review

“…Nevertheless, it is important to underline that the mentioned findings on the role of [ 18 F]FDG are based on the analyses of the accumulated clinical data in PCa patients rather than the analyses of the mechanism of NEPC. In this setting, this tracer cannot differentiate neuroendocrine differentiation from complex PCa cases by only relying on tumor uptake mechanism, and cases of positive PET/CT scans have been mainly described in treatment-induced NEPC [43]. Generally speaking, it has been reported that neuroendocrine differentiation is not always associated with [ 18 F]FDG uptake, and moreover, PET/CT with this radiopharmaceutical is usually performed for high-grade and poorly differentiated forms of neuroendocrine neoplasms [3,44,45].…”

“…Even if not included in this review, data published in the literature have also underlined the role of PET/CT imaging in PCa and NEPC in preclinical settings. In this scenario, it has been proposed that specific forms of NEPC, depending on their origin, can be imaged with different radiopharmaceuticals based on preclinical evidence [41,43,46,47]. Moreover, new tracers able to evaluate the presence of NEPC or its progression from CRPC are continuously developed and hopefully will help in the assessment of the disease [34,[48][49][50].…”