Radiopharmaceuticals in China: current status and prospects

The review provides an overview of the current status of radiopharmaceuticals in China for in vivo clinical use and also describes some important advances in the past three decades. Development of the diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals as well as basic research on radiopharmaceutical chemistry are being introduced. The radiotracers developed in China include: (1) Brain perfusion imaging agents and CNS radiotracers for beta-amyloid plaques, sigma(1) receptors, and dopamine D-2 or D-4 receptors; (2) Tc-99m- and F-18-labeled myocardial perfusion imaging agents; (3) tumor imaging agents including integrin-targeting radiotracer, novel sentinel lymph node imaging agents, hypoxia imaging agents, Tc-99m-labeled glucose derivatives, sigma(2) receptor imaging agents, folate receptor imaging agents, and potential radiotracers for imaging of human telomerase reverse transcriptase expression; (4) Potential infection imaging agents; (5) Potential asialoglycoprotein receptor imaging agents; (6) Other imaging agents. Moreover, some prospects of research and development of radiopharmaceuticals in the near future are discussed.