Endocrine Abstracts

Radiolabeled peptides that target with high affinity and specificity their receptors on tumor cells are being applied as nuclear tracers for both diagnostic imaging and targeted radionuclide therapy with great success. It is an extensive process to bring a newly designed radiolabelled peptide molecule from its design into the clinic however and from a vast number of newly designed and developed radiolabeled peptides only few will finally meet the conditions for clinical application. So, in tracer development, preclinical work in different models with different levels of complexity has to be performed, ranging from studies using isolated cells or cell membranes to validate receptor affinity and specificity to imaging and therapy studies in vivo in animal models. The radiolabeled peptides that successfully pass all the desired preclinical tests, including toxicological studies and established radiopharmaceutical preparation, may enter clinical studies in humans. This lecture will focus on translational studies to be performed for translation into the clinic of novel peptide tracers from different peptide families and will focus on experimental conditions, hurdles, pitfalls, and opportunities related to preclinical evaluation. In this lecture also examples of peptide molecules that have been successful and peptide molecules that failed will be given.