Challenges in the Development of PET and SPECT Radiotracers: Innovative Ideas with Negative Outcomes
A special issue of Pharmaceuticals (ISSN 1424-8247). This special issue belongs to the section "Radiopharmaceutical Sciences".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 25 September 2025 | Viewed by 139
Special Issue Editors
Interests: brain tumours; PET/MRI; small animal imaging; radiotracer development
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
We are pleased to announce a Special Issue dedicated to the challenges and innovative efforts in the development of PET and SPECT radiotracers. This collection aims to highlight the complexities and hurdles in this field and the importance of "unsuccessful" endeavors for the advancement of radiopharmaceutical research.
With this Special Issue, we will provide a space to present substantial research with negative results in the field of radiotracer development and seek to emphasize innovative ideas that, despite their potential, have resulted in supposedly unpublishable outcomes. We believe that knowing what fails is as important as knowing what succeeds to support a comprehensive understanding, encourage methodological improvements and finally strengthen the scientific community.
Radiotracer development for PET and SPECT imaging involves numerous challenges in medicinal chemistry, radiolabeling, purification, stability, target selectivity, and in vivo pharmacokinetics. These obstacles can lead to unexpected negative results, which are often underreported but crucial for scientific progress and innovation.
Publishing such results is essential for advancing our collective knowledge and guiding future research. Moreover, it prevents duplications of efforts and contributes to a more reliable scientific literature. We therefore look forward to receiving your contributions in the fields of medicinal chemistry, radiochemistry, and in vitro and/or in vivo preclinical evaluation of newly developed or known PET and SPECT radiopharmaceuticals.
This Special Issue is open to original research articles, brief reports, and reviews.
Dr. Magali Toussaint
Dr. Barbara Wenzel
Guest Editors
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Keywords
- radiotracer development
- positron emission tomography (PET)
- single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT)
- negative results
- diagnostic radiotracers
- therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals
- radiolabeling
- automated synthesis and GMP
- pre-clinical studies
- medicinal chemistry
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