The mile-stone of PET radiopharmaceuticals development

The positron emitting nuclides were already tried in 1940's as in vivo radio-tracers in the research field of medical biology. In 1976, the discovery of 18FDG with the developing of a positron imaging device, allowed to obtain the image of the human brain by PET technology. Today, 18FDG is widely used in tumour diagnosis by a metabolic trapping mechanism, which is a new concept for functional imaging and makes possible the monitoring of the therapy process. This is first milestone of PET radiopharmaceutical development. The second milestone is the establishment of a molecular imaging method in nuclear medicine and third, is the development of the theragnostic concept of radiopharmaceuticals. At present highlight works are focused in tau protein imaging for Alzheimer disease diagnosis and inflammation imaging.