To date, PET techniques have largely concentrated on radiotracers with an affinity for areas of high metabolic activity (e.g. FDG) or protein biosynthesis (e.g. FET). Researchers and clinicians could study a much wider range of oncological, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative conditions if they had access to radiotracers that were high specific for other parts of the central nervous system and brain.

In general terms, receptor-based radiopharmaceuticals could provide valuable information about strokes, rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s disease and a number of tumours, including gliomas, melanomas and breast, ovarian and prostate cancer.

The use of receptor-based radiopharmaceuticals offers significant technical challenges because the number of receptor sites can be limited, and consequently can be saturated by a binding agent. High specific activities ('hot' fluoride to 'cold' fluoride ratios) are required, and even so the signals can be weak.

Uptake can also exhibit slow kinetics, this work is likely to require longer-lived radioisotopes than Fluorine-18, such as Idonine-124 and various yttrium isotopes. This situation creates the possibility of developing diagnostic/therapeutic pairs, for example, by labelling an antibody with Idonine-124 for imaging or with Idonine-131 for therapy.

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