• Country: Sweden
  • Official Title: Professor
  • Department: Department of Clinical Neuroscience
  • Institute: Karolinska Institutet
  • E-Mail: christer.halldin@ki.se

Speech Title

PET Radioligand Development in Neuroscience and Drug Development

PET provides a new way to image the function of a target and by elevating the mass, to pharmacologically modify the function of the target. The main applications of radioligands in brain research concern human neuropsychopharmacology and the discovery and development of novel drugs to be used in the therapy of psychiatric and neurological disorders. A basic problem in PET brain receptor studies is the lack of useful radioligands with ideal binding characteristics. Most of the currently used drugs for the treatment of psychiatric and neurological disorders interact with central neurotransmission. Several receptor subtypes, transmitter carriers, and enzymes have proven to be useful targets for drug treatment. Molecular biological techniques have now revealed the existence of hundreds of novel targets for which little or no prior pharmacological or functional data existed. Due to the lack of data on the functional significance of these sites, pharmacologists are now challenged to find the physiological roles of these receptors and identify selective agents and possible therapeutic indications. The need for novel PET radioligands for clinical PET imaging is increasing and especially important within clinical research and drug development. Drug industry is heavily involved in PET for drug development in collaboration with academia.