Positron Emission Tomography Image-Guided Drug Delivery: Current Status and Future Perspectives

Abstract

Positron emission tomography (PET) is an important modality in the field of molecular imaging, which is gradually impacting patient care by providing safe, fast, and reliable techniques that help to alter the course of patient care by revealing invasive, de facto procedures to be unnecessary or rendering them obsolete. Also, PET provides a key connection between the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathophysiology of disease and the according targeted therapies. Recently, PET imaging is also gaining ground in the field of drug delivery. Current drug delivery research is focused on developing novel drug delivery systems with emphasis on precise targeting, accurate dose delivery, and minimal toxicity in order to achieve maximum therapeutic efficacy. At the intersection between PET imaging and controlled drug delivery, interest has grown in combining both these paradigms into clinically effective formulations. PET image-guided drug delivery has great potential to revolutionize patient care by in vivo assessment of drug biodistribution and accumulation at the target site and real-time monitoring of the therapeutic outcome. The expected end point of this approach is to provide fundamental support for the optimization of innovative diagnostic and therapeutic strategies that could contribute to emerging concepts in the field of “personalized medicine”. This review focuses on the recent developments in PET image-guided drug delivery and discusses intriguing opportunities for future development. The preclinical data reported to date are quite promising, and it is evident that such strategies in cancer management hold promise for clinically translatable advances that can positively impact the overall diagnostic and therapeutic processes and result in enhanced quality of life for cancer patients.

Formulation, characterization and tissue distribution of a novel pH-sensitive long-circulating liposome-based theranostic suitable for molecular imaging and drug delivery

“…1,2,29 The imaging function requires the labeling of theranostic carriers with radioactive or non-radioactive isotopes on the bilayer surface or through encapsulation. While some prefer the design that shields the imaging elements from the outer biological environment, others appreciate surface chelation for its versatility in the choice of radionuclides and its high labeling efficiency.…”

Nuclear Medicine and Drug Delivery

“…These photons are detected in the PET camera by a ring of detectors configured to detect coincidence. The registered events are then reconstructed into a three-dimensional image [5,9].…”

“…One classic example is radioiodine, used to diagnose and treat some thyroid pathologies. Theranostics has played a vital role in radiation-based therapies, especially when using targeted radiopharmaceuticals [9,12].…”

“…Most therapies use beta-emitters (I-131, Y-90, and Lu-177), but Auger-, Alpha-, or conversion electron emitters are also good candidates [3,8]. The targeting ligands can also be radiolabeled with suitable positron emitters such as F-18 and Ga-68, for PET monitoring and evaluation purposes [9]. Theranostics agents play a major role in the development of radiopharmaceuticals, validating its target profile and early-disease diagnostics.…”

Recent advances in the preparation and application of multifunctional iron oxide and liposome-based nanosystems for multimodal diagnosis and therapy

“…Nanotechnology, as an interdisciplinary field involving biology, chemistry, engineering, medicine and physics, offers a wide variety of advantages in cancer diagnosis and therapy [34,[68][69][70]. Multimodal therapy, early diagnosis and image-guided surgery or therapy are some examples of the same [66,71]. In this direction, IONPs have been widely used as MRI contrast agents as well as an excellent platform to which radionuclides can be incorporated, finally enabling an engineered molecular probe for dual imaging.…”