Abstract
Molecular Imaging Comes of Age: Applications and Impacts in Discovery,
Clinical Trials, and Medical Practice provides insight into the technologies
that will impact healthcare over the next five years from early research to the
delivery of care. The report presents a comprehensive assessment of the latest
trends and developments in molecular imaging, enhanced by the insights of
opinion leaders from industry and academia. A market outlook completes the
analysis.
Molecular imaging has become a business that covers the spectrum from basic
cell biology to drug discovery and disease monitoring. The forms in which it has
been commercialized are also highly diverse, indicating both substantial growth
opportunities for companies competing in this space, as well as new and improved
methodologies for researchers. Molecular Imaging Comes of Age evaluates the
competing technologies and their applications in three key areas:
Discovery
The pharmaceutical industry has placed a large bet on molecular imaging.
While monitoring and guiding of drug therapies with PET will help clinicians to
use drugs in a more targeted fashion, molecular imagings core role for the
pharmaceutical industry is in drug discovery and development. The report
examines ways in which pure research is already profiting from cell-based
molecular imaging, which will continue to be based on fluorescence,
bioluminescence, and confocal microscopy. Applications in small animal imaging,
lead characterization, and lead optimization are also discussed. The insights
into basic cell biology that this research is yielding today will form the basis
of drug development during the second half of the decade, as the results are
absorbed by the pharmaceutical industry.
Clinical Applications
The report highlights clinical applications of molecular imaging technology
in cancer, particularly ovarian cancer, as well as cardiovascular disease and
inflammation. Experimental clinical applications that reach far beyond these
fields, including for instance neuropsychiatry, angiogenesis, and the monitoring
of gene therapy are also covered.
Clinical Trials
All regulatory authorities demand that drug developers present a reasonable
amount of scientific proof for claims that the candidate compound binds to the
designated molecular target, or exerts the expected physiological effect in the
target tissue(s). In many cases, molecular imaging will be the method of choice
for obtaining such data. The report discusses the general regulatory issues that
will impact the use of imaging agents in clinical trials. | 
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