Advances in radiotracer for PET imaging of apoptosis

Apoptosis is a fundamental biologic process. Molecular imaging of apoptosis in vivo may have important implications for clinical practice, especially for treatment and prognosis of malignancies. PET, as a radionuclide imaging method, has an advantage in functional molecular imaging, which plays an important role in apoptosis imaging studies of tumor. In recent years, many PET probes based on the importance of apoptosis imaging are being developed, including positron radionuclide labeled Annexin-V, Caspase-3 inhibitor, Hydrophobic positive ion and the structures targeting various steps of the apoptotic cascade mentioned above can reflect the apoptotic status of living tissue cells.