Editorial European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging

Excerpt

In this issue of The European Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, Xiaohui Luan et al. at Shandong Cancer Hospital report the role of ¹⁸F-alfatide positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for assessment of integrin αvβ3 expression in predicting the short-term outcome of concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). There is a need for an effective predicting tool to select patients with advanced NSCLC who may benefit from CCRT, which represents the standard of therapy protocol, because one-third of these patients experience local failure. Molecular imaging of specific biological targets known to play a role in tumour biology and aggressiveness lends itself for this purpose. Especially, the integrin αvβ3 has gained interest in this respect as it is known to be overexpressed on activated endothelial cells in angiogenesis and also on many tumour cells and plays an important role in cell–cell and cell–matrix interactions in general. In the past two decades, the potential of using radio-labelled arginine-glycine-aspartic acid (RGD)-containing peptides to serve as imaging agents for noninvasive evaluation of integrin expression has been profoundly investigated by several research groups. For the development of a clinically suitable αvβ3 integrin-binding radiopharmaceutical, and radiopharmaceuticals in general, several challenges have to be taken into account. Aside from sublime in vivo stability, high receptor affinity, favorable pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, and low toxicity and immunogenicity, the radiolabelling procedure should be rapid and without the necessity of laborious purification steps. …