Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals Applied in Nuclear Medicine

This book is divided into three parts, entitled: Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals; "In vitro" Assay Methods with Labelled Compounds and Radiopharmaceuticals in Clinical Medicine. The first part is an introduction into radioactivity, preparation of radioisotopes and labelled compounds, separation of stable isotopes and their medical applications, conversion of a radioactively-labelled compound into a radiopharmaceutical, and special problems of radio-pharmaceuticals, emphasizing the quality control. A unified treatment is presented for the incorporation of a radioactive or a stable isotope into a labelled compound. The 7 chapters are accompanied by more than 1000 literature references. The second part is addressed to physicians, chemists and bio- chemists or biophysicists interested in radioimmunology; it presents the principles and applications of radioimmunoassay, competitive binding assay and radioreceptor assay, emphasizing both the methodology, and the pathways for developing and "in vitro" assay method for a new antigen.
The chapter on applications contains also dynamic investigations, some of them developed by the author of this part, and the utilization of co- products of the radioimmunoassay method in physiology. This part has 6 chapters and several hundred literature quotations. The third part is based on a radiopharmacological viewpoint. It synthesizes elements of biokinetics, localization mechanisms under normal and pathological conditions, the possibility of obtaining side-effects, posology, indications and contraindications in clinical practice. This part contains 11 chapters and several hundred literature references, including personal contributions of the author. The last chapter is an anticipation about the future developments in radiopharmacy and in applications of radiopharmaceuticals. There exists at present no book, in the world's scientific literature comparable to the present one: it bridges the gap between monographs on radiopharmacy and nuclear medicine, and includes a substantial part on "in vitro" assays.