Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

In nuclear medicine the detection of inflamed and infected lesions is of growing interest and extensive efforts have been made to develop radiopharmaceuticals specific for inflammation or rather for discrimination of sterile inflammation from infection. 99mTc is the worldwide most-used radioisotope for SPECT investigations; the scope of this review article is to give an overview on the development of 99mTc-labeled small molecule radiotracers targeting inflammatory and infected lesions, from their radiopharmacological evaluation up to examples of clinical application. A systematic overview of 99mTc-citrate, 99mTc-antibiotics and antifungal agents as well as 99mTc-labeled antimicrobial peptides is provided. Additionally, the class of 99mTc-labeled cyclooxygenase-2 inhibitors is discussed, since cyclooxygenases are known to play a key role in inflammatory but also in malignant neoplastic diseases.