Radiopharmaceuticals for Breast Cancer and Neuroendocrine Tumors: Two Examples of How Tissue Characterization May Influence the Choice of Therapy

Molecular medicine has gained clinical relevance for the detection and staging of oncological diseases, to guide therapy decision making and for therapy follow-up due to the availability of new highly sensitive hybrid imaging camera systems and the development of new tailored radiopharmaceuticals that target specific molecules. The knowledge of the expression of different receptors on the primary tumor and on metastases is important for both therapeutic and prognostic purposes and several approaches are available aiming to achieve personalized medicine in different oncological diseases. In this review, we describe the use of specific radiopharmaceuticals to image and predict therapy response in breast cancer and neuroendocrine tumors since they represent a paradigmatic example of the importance of tumoral characterization of hormonal receptors in order to plan a tailored treatment. The most attractive radiopharmaceuticals for breast cancer are 16α-[ F]-fluoro-17β-estradiol for PET assessment of the estrogen expression, radiolabeled monoclonal antibody trastuzumab to image the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2, but also the imaging of androgen receptors with [ F]-fluorodihydrotestosterone.