Positron emission tomography (PET) and anticancer drug development

Extract: The last ten years saw a rapid increase in the number and type of new agents undergoing clinical evaluation for the treatment of cancer. Unfortunately, this expansion in drug development is associated with a high rate of attrition from success in early clinical evaluation to regulatory approval. Furthermore, a recent analysis showed that innovations around clinically validated mechanisms aimed at being best-in-class have created more value for the pharmaceutical industry than their first-in-class counterparts (i.e., some drugs similar to previous ones may work better and commercially more successful than novel drugs). These developments have stimulated research into finding methods for the early assessment of efficacy and for the demonstration of proof-of-principle (i.e., that the drug is hitting the correct target) of new agents in cancer patients. It is thought that conventional anatomical imaging methods for assessing treatment response are not only less applicable to many of the new agents, but also might contribute to the high rate of attrition of new agents during the drug development process.