Radiolabelled Quinoline Derivaties for the PET Imaging of Peripheral Benzodiazepine Receptor

Peripheral benzodiazepine receptor (PBR) has been implicated in the regulation of various cellular processes, including regulation of steroidogenesis,immunomodulation, porphyrin transport, heme synthesis, cell apoptosis and proliferation. Also, PBR expression levels were shown to be increased in a variety of cancers indicating its important role in cancer development.The investigation and biological evaluation of specific potent radioligands for positron emission tomography PET (Positron emission tomography) studies of PBRs are of great value as they have been associated with a variety of disease processes such as cancer, autoimmune diseases, viral infection, neurodegeneration,stress, and brain injury. More than twenty years have seen the development of radiolabelled quinoline derivaties (3-isoquinolinecarboxamide and quinoline-2-carboxamides) and some of these novel probes have been evaluated for the PET imaging of PBR. This mini review is aiming to provide a brief overview on the research on this kind of imiging probe.