The 143rd Annual Meeting of the Pharmaceutical Society of Japan (Sapporo)

Organizer: Tomoya Uehara, Noriko Daneshtalab, Michael Doschak, Yoshinobu Takakura

Molecular imaging technique is a technology that captures various biological phenomena occurring in vivo at the molecular level and visualizes them in a living organism. Such techniques include X-ray CT, MRI, fluorescence imaging, nuclear medicine imaging (PET, SPECT) and so on, and imaging is performed using one or more of these. Such molecular imaging techniques is a very useful tool not only for diagnosis pathological conditions and elucidate biological phenomena, but also for drug development. For example, if a drug is labeled by a radionuclide, nuclear medicine imaging can be used to evaluate the kinetics of the drug. The efficacy of drugs can be evaluated by morphological evaluation using X-ray CT or MRI, and functional evaluation using nuclear medicine imaging and fluorescence imaging. Furthermore, it is also possible to obtain various information related to PK/PD, such as optimization of drug dosage and administration route. In this symposium, four speakers introduce the new attractions and applications of molecular or preclinical imaging in the pharmaceutical sciences.