REVIEW  FOCUS ON 64CU: RADIOPHARMACEUTICALS AND CLINICAL APPLICATIONS Free access

The Quarterly Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging 2020 December;64(4):346-55

DOI: 10.23736/S1824-4785.20.03315-4

Copyright © 2020 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

lingua: Inglese

Copper-64 labeled nanoparticles for positron emission tomography imaging: a review of the recent literature

Gabriela CAPRIOTTI ^{1, 2} ✉, Michela VARANI ¹, Chiara LAURI ¹, Gabriele FRANCHI ², Patrizia PIZZICHINI ², Alberto SIGNORE ^{1, 2}

¹ Unit of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Medical-Surgical Sciences and Translational Medicine, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy; ² Unit of Nuclear Medicine, Sant’Andrea University Hospital, Rome, Italy

INTRODUCTION: Nuclear medicine plays a crucial role for personalized therapy, mainly in oncology. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy present some disadvantages and research is shifting toward nanotechnology with significant improvements in therapy and diagnosis of several cancers. Indeed, nanoparticles can be tagged with different radioisotopes for single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET) imaging and for therapy. This review describes the current state of the art of ⁶⁴Copper-labeled nanoparticles for PET imaging of cancer.
EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: We performed a systematic analysis of literature using the terms “64CuCl2,” “64Cu,” “Copper” AND “nanoparticle” AND “PET” in online databases: i.e. PubMed/MEDLINE and Scopus. The search was limited to English papers and original articles. We excluded articles not in English language, abstracts, case reports, review articles and meeting presentations.
EVIDENCE SYNTHESIS: Amongst the 116 articles retrieved, 88 were excluded because reviews, or not in English, or only in-vitro studies or meeting presentations. We considered only 28 original papers. The most used nanoparticles are liposomes and they are mainly used in breast cancer although other animal models of cancer have been also investigated.
CONCLUSIONS: The results showed that nanoparticles can be considered a promising radiopharmaceutical for PET imaging of different type of cancer.

KEY WORDS: Nanoparticles; Positron-emission tomography; Copper-64; Neoplasms