Advancing Nuclear Medicine Through Innovation

Nearly 20 million nuclear medicine procedures are carried out each year in the United States alone to diagnose and treat cancers, cardiovascular disease, and certain neurological disorders. Many of the advancements in nuclear medicine have been the result of research investments made during the past 50 years where these procedures are now a routine part of clinical care. Although nuclear medicine plays an important role in biomedical research and disease management, its promise is only beginning to be realized. Advancing Nuclear Medicine Through Innovation highlights the exciting emerging opportunities in nuclear medicine, which include assessing the efficacy of new drugs in development, individualizing treatment to the patient, and understanding the biology of human diseases. Health care and pharmaceutical professionals will be most interested in this book's examination of the challenges the field faces and its recommendations for ways to reduce these impediments.

Radioimmunotherapy, also known as systemic targeted radiation therapy, uses antibodies, antibody fragments, or compounds as carriers to guide radiation to the targets. It is a topic rapidly increasing in importance and success in treatment of cancer patients. This book represents a comprehensive amalgamation of the radiation physics, chemistry, radiobiology, tumor models, and clinical data for targeted radionuclide therapy. It outlines the current challenges and provides a glimpse at future directions. With significant advances in cell biology and molecular engineering, many targeting constructs are now available that will safely deliver these highly cytotoxic radionuclides in a targeted fashion. A companion website includes the full text and an image bank.

Rare diseases collectively affect millions of Americans of all ages, but developing drugs and medical devices to prevent, diagnose, and treat these conditions is challenging. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recommends implementing an integrated national strategy to promote rare diseases research and product development.

Electricity, supplied reliably and affordably, is foundational to the U.S. economy and is utterly indispensable to modern society. However, emissions resulting from many forms of electricity generation create environmental risks that could have significant negative economic, security, and human health consequences. Large-scale installation of cleaner power generation has been generally hampered because greener technologies are more expensive than the technologies that currently produce most of our power. Rather than trade affordability and reliability for low emissions, is there a way to balance all three? The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies considers how to speed up innovations that would dramatically improve the performance and lower the cost of currently available technologies while also developing new advanced cleaner energy technologies. According to this report, there is an opportunity for the United States to continue to lead in the pursuit of increasingly clean, more efficient electricity through innovation in advanced technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies makes the case that America's advantagesâ€"world-class universities and national laboratories, a vibrant private sector, and innovative states, cities, and regions that are free to experiment with a variety of public policy approachesâ€"position the United States to create and lead a new clean energy revolution. This study focuses on five paths to accelerate the market adoption of increasing clean energy and efficiency technologies: (1) expanding the portfolio of cleaner energy technology options; (2) leveraging the advantages of energy efficiency; (3) facilitating the development of increasing clean technologies, including renewables, nuclear, and cleaner fossil; (4) improving the existing technologies, systems, and infrastructure; and (5) leveling the playing field for cleaner energy technologies. The Power of Change: Innovation for Development and Deployment of Increasingly Clean Energy Technologies is a call for leadership to transform the United States energy sector in order to both mitigate the risks of greenhouse gas and other pollutants and to spur future economic growth. This study's focus on science, technology, and economic policy makes it a valuable resource to guide support that produces innovation to meet energy challenges now and for the future.

Scientists and engineers have long relied on the power of imaging techniques to help see objects invisible to the naked eye, and thus, to advance scientific knowledge. These experts are constantly pushing the limits of technology in pursuit of chemical imagingâ€"the ability to visualize molecular structures and chemical composition in time and space as actual events unfoldâ€"from the smallest dimension of a biological system to the widest expanse of a distant galaxy. Chemical imaging has a variety of applications for almost every facet of our daily lives, ranging from medical diagnosis and treatment to the study and design of material properties in new products. In addition to highlighting advances in chemical imaging that could have the greatest impact on critical problems in science and technology, Visualizing Chemistry reviews the current state of chemical imaging technology, identifies promising future developments and their applications, and suggests a research and educational agenda to enable breakthrough improvements.

Evidence suggests that medical innovation is becoming increasingly dependent on interdisciplinary research and on the crossing of institutional boundaries. This volume focuses on the conditions governing the supply of new medical technologies and suggest that the boundaries between disciplines, institutions, and the private and public sectors have been redrawn and reshaped. Individual essays explore the nature, organization, and management of interdisciplinary R&D in medicine; the introduction into clinical practice of the laser, endoscopic innovations, cochlear implantation, cardiovascular imaging technologies, and synthetic insulin; the division of innovating labor in biotechnology; the government- industry-university interface; perspectives on industrial R&D management; and the growing intertwining of the public and proprietary in medical technology.

This book is a comprehensive guide to radiopharmaceutical chemistry. The stunning clinical successes of nuclear imaging and targeted radiotherapy have resulted in rapid growth in the field of radiopharmaceutical chemistry, an essential component of nuclear medicine and radiology. However, at this point, interest in the field outpaces the academic and educational infrastructure needed to train radiopharmaceutical chemists. For example, the vast majority of texts that address radiopharmaceutical chemistry do so only peripherally, focusing instead on nuclear chemistry (i.e. nuclear reactions in reactors), heavy element radiochemistry (i.e. the decomposition of radioactive waste), or solely on the clinical applications of radiopharmaceuticals (e.g. the use of PET tracers in oncology). This text fills that gap by focusing on the chemistry of radiopharmaceuticals, with key coverage of how that knowledge translates to the development of diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals for the clinic. The text is divided into three overarching sections: First Principles, Radiochemistry, and Special Topics. The first is a general overview covering fundamental and broad issues like “The Production of Radionuclides” and “Basics of Radiochemistry”. The second section is the main focus of the book. In this section, each chapter’s author will delve much deeper into the subject matter, covering both well established and state-of-the-art techniques in radiopharmaceutical chemistry. This section will be divided according to radionuclide and will include chapters on radiolabeling methods using all of the common nuclides employed in radiopharmaceuticals, including four chapters on the ubiquitously used fluorine-18 and a “Best of the Rest” chapter to cover emerging radionuclides. Finally, the third section of the book is dedicated to special topics with important information for radiochemists, including “Bioconjugation Methods,” “Click Chemistry in Radiochemistry”, and “Radiochemical Instrumentation.” This is an ideal educational guide for nuclear medicine physicians, radiologists, and radiopharmaceutical chemists, as well as residents and trainees in all of these areas.

This book is devoted to innovative medicine, comprising the proceedings of the Uehara Memorial Foundation Symposium 2014. It remains extremely rare for the findings of basic research to be developed into clinical applications, and it takes a long time for the process to be achieved. The task of advancing the development of basic research into clinical reality lies with translational science, yet the field seems to struggle to find a way to move forward. To create innovative medical technology, many steps need to be taken: development and analysis of optimal animal models of human diseases, elucidation of genomic and epidemiological data, and establishment of “proof of concept”. There is also considerable demand for progress in drug research, new surgical procedures, and new clinical devices and equipment. While the original research target may be rare diseases, it is also important to apply those findings more broadly to common diseases. The book covers a wide range of topics and is organized into three complementary parts. The first part is basic research for innovative medicine, the second is translational research for innovative medicine, and the third is new technology for innovative medicine. This book helps to understand innovative medicine and to make progress in its realization.