Researchers envision multiple potential applications for their discovery, including for medical imaging to screen patients for response to a drug, or to aid in drug development research.

"Not only can we study where drugs are localized in the body, which is something that's important for drug development work, but we could also develop imaging agents to track cancer progression or inflammation in the body, aiding in cancer research and Alzheimer's research," Nicewicz said. "Having more than one method for tumor detection may give you cross-verification to make sure what you're seeing is real. If you have two methods to validate a scan - two is better than one."


While existing radiolabeling methods requires the synthesis of dedicated new compounds to attach the radiotag, researchers say their approach may allow them to attach a tag existing compounds - a boon for drug development research.

"In this study, we showed that we could label a broad spectrum of compounds," Li said, including for anti-inflammatory drugs, and specific amino acids to show that they could image tumors.

Li also said the information obtained by the new PET tracer could aid in the development of corresponding treatment plans, depending on the imaging result, which would be an important step in providing personalized medicine.

The researchers said the next step is to develop a device that would make it easier for scientists to use this new method for creating radiolabeled tracers. In addition, they are working to expand their technology to develop other tracers that use a different radioactive material, such as Carbon-11.

"This discovery opens a new window for generating novel PET agents from existing drugs," Li said. "Many very complicated, or almost impossible to label drugs, could potentially work using this method."

In addition to Li and Nicewicz, other authors include Wei Chen, Nicholas E. S. Tay, Benjamin Giglio, Mengzhe Wang, Hui Wang, and Zhanhong Wu.

The study was supported by the National Institutes of Health, the UNC Department of Radiology, Biomedical Research Imaging Center, and UNC Lineberger. Tay is supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

Conflict of interest: Tay and Nicewicz and inventors on a patent related to the technology filed by UNC, and currently pending.

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