Current molecular imaging positron emitting radiotracers in oncology

Molecular imaging is one of the fastest growing areas of medical imaging. Positron emission tomography (PET) has been widely used in the clinical management of patients with cancer. Nuclear imaging provides biological information at the cellular, subcellular, and molecular level in living subjects with non-invasive procedures. In particular, PET imaging takes advantage of traditional diagnostic imaging techniques and introduces positron-emitting probes to determine the expression of indicative molecular targets at different stages of cancer. (18)F-fluorodeoxyglucose ((18)F-FDG), the only FDA approved oncological PET tracer, has been widely utilized in cancer diagnosis, staging, restaging, and even monitoring response to therapy; however, (18)F-FDG is not a tumor-specific PET tracer. Over the last decade, many promising tumor-specific PET tracers have been developed and evaluated in preclinical and clinical studies. This review provides an overview of the current non-(18)F-FDG PET tracers in oncology that have been developed based on tumor characteristics such as increased metabolism, hyperproliferation, angiogenesis, hypoxia, apoptosis, and tumor-specific antigens and surface receptors.