How do imaging techniques like PET open doors to new treatments and medications?
The development of new medications is an arduous, expensive process. Based on the experience of the pharmaceutical industry, we know that only a small percentage of drugs taken out of discovery to clinical trial make it as approved drugs. We’d like to increase the number of drugs that make it. It’s very expensive to take a drug to a clinical trial and have it fail. Q: So, how do we better predict which drugs will be successful? A: With PET we can see whether the drug molecules get into the organ of interest, for example, into the brain. If it doesn’t get into the target organ, it won’t be successful. After that, once it is in the brain, does it bind to the correct site? With PET, we can actually see where the drugs are binding to different molecular targets in different parts of the brain. After that, the question becomes, is the drug targeting the receptor in sufficient quantities? Too little would make it less effective. Too much might cause side effects. PET can tell us that. We can
