Apoptosis imaging by radionuclide probes

Apoptosis has attracted more and more research interests due to the critical role it played in the human health. Also, it is often confused with other types of cell death. Thus, methods that enable sensitive detection and noninvasive visualized imaging of apoptosis will be of enormous benefit in the development of new diagnostics, therapies and patient management. During the past decades, with the development of apoptosis understanding and molecular imaging modalities, a large collection of imaging agents based on well-defined molecular markers and/or physiological features have been developed and tested in preclinical and clinical studies. In this review, we mainly discuss radionuclide imaging probes, ranging from simple attachments of reporter moieties to proteins and peptides, to rationally designed probes that allow multimodal imaging. Furthermore, we briefly outline the current status of clinical translation and attempt to give an outlook on the further study.