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Novel Amino Acid Transporter-Targeted Radiotracers For Breast Cancer Imaging, Fanlin Kong

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women in the world. Its 5-year survival rate ranges from 23.4% in patients with stage IV to 98% in stage I disease, highlighting the importance of early detection and diagnosis. ¹⁸F-2-Fluoro-2-deoxy-glucose (¹⁸F-FDG), using positron emission tomography (PET), is the most common functional imaging tool for breast cancer diagnosis currently. Unfortunately, ¹⁸F-FDG-PET has several limitations such as poorly differentiating tumor tissues from inflammatory and normal brain tissues. Therefore, ¹⁸F-labeled amino acid-based radiotracers have been reported as an alternative, which is based on the fact that tumor cells uptake …