Abstract
Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging offers physiological and biological information through the in vivo distribution of PET agents for disease diagnosis, therapy monitoring and prognosis evaluation. Due to the unique structural characteristics allowing for facile modification of targeting ligands and radionuclides, dendrimers can be served as a versatile scaffold to build up various PET imaging agents, and significant breakthroughs have been made in this field over the past decades. This review focuses on the recent advances in dendrimer-based contrast agents for PET imaging of cancer, cardiovascular and other diseases. In particular, radiolabeling strategies for different PET isotopes are described in detail. Several challenges involved in clinical translation of radiolabeled dendrimers are also discussed.
Keywords:
Dendrimers; PET; contrast agent; positron isotope; radiolabeling.
MeSH terms
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Animals
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Cardiovascular Diseases / diagnosis
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Contrast Media / chemistry*
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Dendrimers / chemistry*
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Humans
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Neoplasms / diagnosis
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Positron-Emission Tomography / methods
Substances
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Contrast Media
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Dendrimers
Grants and funding
This research is financially supported by the The National Natural Science Foundation of China (81671712, 81401440, 81761148028 and 21773028), the Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (17540712000), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. L. Zhao thanks the support from the Shanghai Sailing Program (16YF1409300). X. Shi also acknowledges the support by FCT-Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (project PEst-OE/QUI/UI0674/2013, CQM, Portuguese Government funds) and by ARDITI-Agência Regional para o Desenvolvimento da Investigação Tecnologia e Inovação through the project M1420-01-0145-FEDER-000005-Centro de Química da Madeira-CQM + (Madeira 14-20).