Positron Emission Tomography Radiopharmaceuticals for Sex Steroid Hormone Receptor Imaging

Y.      Kiyono; T.      Mori; H.      Okazawa

Abstract

Understanding the expression of tumor specific receptors is important not only for tumor diagnosis but also for planning the strategy for patient treatment. Tumor receptor has been one of the most critical targets for treatment in cancer such as breast, prostate and thyroid cancers. Positron emission tomography (PET) is a part of molecular imaging techniques based on detecting the radiopharmaceuticals that can capture functional or phenotypic changes associated with pathology. The advantages of detecting tumor specific receptors by PET are its non-invasiveness, providing comprehensive information about receptor expression, avoiding the sampling errors, selecting strategy for the treatment of patients and monitoring tumor response to therapy. Hormonal therapy plays a major role in cancer treatment. Therefore, we review the PET radiopharmaceuticals for sex steroid hormone receptor imaging in this article.

Keywords: Positron emisson tomography, estrogen receptor, androgen receptor, progesterone receptor, radiopharmaceuticals, tumor specific receptors, tumor diagnosis, cancer, breast, pathology