PET Studies on Amino Acid Metabolism and Protein Synthesis

Part 1 Biochemistry and animal studies: cerebral protein turnover - aspects and problems; determination of regional rates of cerebral protein synthesis in vivo with L-{1-14C} Leucine as the tracer amino acid; methionine metabolism in rat brain; protein synthesis studies in rats with methionine; discussion. Part 2 PET radiochemistry: carbon-11 amino acids, labelling and metabolites; quality control aspects in the preparation of {11C}-methionine; production of L-{18F)fluro amino acids for protein synthesis - overview and recent developments in nucleophilic syntheses; biochemistry and evaluation of fluoramino acids; discussion. Part 3 Amino acid uptake modelling: kinetic modelling of fluorotyrosine uptake; kinetic modelling of carbon-11 labelled amino acids; carbon-11 labelled tyrosine as a probe for modelling the protein synthesis rate; kinetic modelling of carbon-ll labelled methionine; approaches to quantitative analysis of amino acid transport and metabolism; 11 C-methionine and rubidium uptake in human brain tumours - comparison of carrier dependent blood-brain barrier transport; discussion. Part 4 Clinical applications: tracers for clinical evaluation of gliomas - a neurologist's view; PET studies of amino acid metabolism - integration in clinical routine and current research on intracranial tumours; uptake of {11C} methionine in non-brain tumours; utilization of amino acid transport rates for the differential diagnosis of brain tumours; use of amino acid uptake and protein synthesis rates for tumour diagnosis; 11C-methionine uptake in brain tumours measured by PET - early clinical results; 11C-labelled methionine uptake in gliomas - modification after therapy and metabolic correlations; in vivo incorporation of labelled methionine into proteins in brain tumours.