Prerequisites for the use of antisense oligonucleotides in nuclear medicine

A new promising perspective in nuclear medicine is the use of radiolabeled antisense oligonucleotides as diagnostic markers. Especially for cancer diagnostics, a quantitative accumulation of antisense probes which are directed against abundantly expressed oncogene mRNAs seems to be reasonable. However, the development of this strategy still requires an optimization of several parameters: (i) rapid and efficient radiolabeling methods, (iii) a fast penetration of the probe into the target tissue, (iii) a fast internalization into the tumor cell, (iv) an oligonucleotide/mRNA hybrid formation with high specificity, and (v) a high stability of the hybrid against intracellular nucleases.