Positron Emission Tomography applications to Drug development and research

The research for the identification and development of new drugs represents a very complex process implying long times and massive investments. This process was not able to parallel the rate of discoveries made in the field of genomic and molecular biology and a gap created between demand of new drugs and the ability of pharmaceutical companies to select good candidates. Positron Emission Tomography, among the different Molecular Imaging modalities, could represent a new tool for the early assessment and screening of new drug candidates and, due to its physical performances and the characteristics of positron-labeled tracers, gain the role of "Biomarker" accepted by the Companies and the Regulatory Bodies of Drug Agencies. To fulfil this task PET has to exploit all of its special features such as data absolute quantification and modelling, high spatial resolution and dynamic imaging. Relevant efforts need to be directed to the careful design and validation of experimental protocols with the main goal of achieving consistency in mulli- centric trials