Perspectives On Nuclear Medicine For Molecular Diagnosis And Integrated Therapy

​This work is devoted to understanding the recent advances in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging technologies along with their application to integrated medical therapy and future drug development. This anthology is based on the international symposium in 2015 entitled “Perspective on Nuclear Medicine for Molecular Diagnosis and Integrated Therapy. “The symposium provided an opportunity to exchange ideas on how to promote nuclear medicine technology and how to extend the technology to medical therapy and drug development, and was also a good opportunity to discuss the future perspective of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging by worldwide leaders in the field. Molecular imaging technologies have been rapidly developed worldwide in recent years. Among those developments, nuclear medicine has come to play an important role in quantitative analysis of biological process in vivo as well as in wide clinical use. With the current progress of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging, this modality has been applied for treatment monitoring and predicting its outcome with the use of optimal imaging biomarkers and suitable quantitative analysis. Truly, a new era has arrived with clinical use of nuclear medicine and molecular imaging for personalized medicine. This volume will benefit a wide variety of researchers in life science including those working in drug development, molecular imaging, and medical therapy as well as physicians who utilize diagnostic imaging.

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.

This book, now published in its second edition, covers a wide range of topics relating to the use of radiopharmaceuticals. The basics of nuclear chemistry, radiochemistry, and radiopharmacology are considered in detail, regulatory issues are reviewed, and potential applications in drug development, translational medicine, clinical diagnostics, and targeted therapy are discussed. Compared with the first edition, the chapters on targeted therapy with alpha- and beta-emitting radiopharmaceuticals and theranostics are completely new. Other chapters have been updated and revised as necessary. Radioisotope-based molecular imaging probes (radiopharmaceuticals) provide unprecedented insights into biochemistry and function in both normal and diseased states of living systems, with unbiased in vivo measurements of regional radiotracer activities offering very high specificity and sensitivity. No other molecular imaging technology, including functional magnetic resonance imaging, can provide such high sensitivity and specificity at a tracer level. This book, written by an experienced radiochemist and scientist, offers valuable insights into the full range of applications of this 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.

The recent revolution in molecular biology offers exciting new opportunities for targeted radionuclide therapy. This up-to-date, comprehensive book, written by world-renowned experts, discusses the basic principles of radionuclide therapy, explores in detail the available treatments, explains the regulatory requirements, and examines likely future developments. The full range of clinical applications is considered, including thyroid cancer, hematological malignancies, brain tumors, liver cancer, bone and joint disease, and neuroendocrine tumors. The combination of theoretical background and practical information will provide the reader with all the knowledge required to administer radionuclide therapy safely and effectively in the individual patient. Careful attention is also paid to the role of the therapeutic nuclear physician in coordinating a diverse multidisciplinary team, which is central to the safe provision of treatment.

This book is based on contributions presented at the 1st World Congress on Gallium-68 and Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy, which examined recent developments in theranostics – the emerging field of molecular targeting of vectors that can be used for both diagnosis and therapy, when modified accordingly. The focus of this book is on the rapidly developing research into and clinical applications of gallium-68 and other generator-produced PET radionuclides in the personalized diagnosis and treatment of neuroendocrine tumors and other diseases. In addition, new PET radiopharmaceuticals are considered, and the latest ideas and concepts, presented. Theranostics embodies both molecular and personalized medicine. It is at the cutting edge of medicine, and the contents of this volume will be of interest to chemists, physicians, and investigators dealing with generators, PET radiochemistry, molecular imaging, and radionuclide therapy.

This open access book gives a complete and comprehensive introduction to the fields of medical imaging systems, as designed for a broad range of applications. The authors of the book first explain the foundations of system theory and image processing, before highlighting several modalities in a dedicated chapter. The initial focus is on modalities that are closely related to traditional camera systems such as endoscopy and microscopy. This is followed by more complex image formation processes: magnetic resonance imaging, X-ray projection imaging, computed tomography, X-ray phase-contrast imaging, nuclear imaging, ultrasound, and optical coherence tomography.