MIC Lecture: Peptides for imaging cancer

Roland Haubner
Department of Nuclear Medicine, Medical University of Innsbruck

Peptides for imaging cancer
During the last decades a variety of radiolabeled peptides have been developed as imaging probes
as well as for therapeutic applications. This include antagonists as well as agonists binding to the somatostatin receptor, peptideanalogs for imaging prostate cancer, peptides targeting integrins, tracer binding to the chemokine receptor CXCR4 as well as radiolabeled bombesin derivatives and peptides binding CCK2/ gastrin receptors.
Here development and optimization strategies including chemical modifications of peptide chains, cyclisation and insertion of non-natural amino acids as well as PEGylation, glycosylation, and multimerisation are discussed. For the peptides already in routine use some clinical applications will be presented.