Carbon-11 and fluorine-18 chemistry devoted to molecular probes for imaging the brain with positron emission tomography

Exploration of the living human brain in real-time and in a noninvasive way was for centuries only a dream, made, however, possible today with the remarkable development during the four last decades of powerful molecular imaging techniques, and especially positron emission tomography (PET). Molecular PET imaging relies, from a chemical point of view, on the use and preparation of a positron-emitting radiolabelled probe or radiotracer, notably compounds incorporating one of two short-lived radionuclides fluorine-18 (T1/2: 109.8min) and carbon-11 (T1/2: 20.38min). The growing availability and interest for the radiohalogen fluorine-18 in radiopharmaceutical chemistry undoubtedly results from its convenient half-life and the successful use in clinical oncology of 2-[18F]fluoro-2-deoxy-d-glucose ([18F]FDG). The special interest of carbon-11 is not only that carbon is present in virtually all biomolecules and drugs allowing therefore for isotopic labelling of their chemical structures but also that a given molecule could be radiolabelled at different functions or sites, permitting to explore (or to take advantage of) in vivo metabolic pathways. PET chemistry includes production of these short-lived radioactive isotopes via nuclear transmutation reactions using a cyclotron, and is directed towards the development of rapid synthetic methods, at the trace level, for the introduction of these nuclides into a molecule, as well as the use of fast purification, analysis and formulation techniques. PET chemistry is the driving force in molecular PET imaging, and this special issue of the Journal of Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals, which is strongly chemistry and radiochemistry-oriented, aims at illustrating, be it in part only, the state-of-the-art arsenal of reactions currently available and its potential for the research and development of specific molecular probes labelled with the positron emitters carbon-11 and fluorine-18, with optimal imaging properties for PET exploration of the brain. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.