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

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 (64)Copper-labeled nanoparticles for PET imaging of cancer. EVIDENCE ACQUISITION: We performed a systematic analysis of literature using the terms 64CuCl(2), 64Cu, Copper AND nanopartide 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.