Nuclear medicine and CTA: Di Carli reviews the current status of CT angiography in the diagnosis and management of coronary artery disease and calls for evidence-based studies to advance the technique and explore new applications.
Page 1397
Monitoring molecular change: Eisenhut and Haberkorn describe the role of radiolabeled annexin as an in vivo imaging indicator of apoptosis in cancer treatment and emphasize the importance of molecular structure in site-specific labeling.
Page 1400

Thyroid stunning controversy: Woolfenden summarizes evidence for and against the contention that radiation effects from 131I diagnostic doses may impair the ability of remnant tissue or metastases to concentrate iodine during subsequent therapy.
Page 1403
A new look at stunning: Sisson and colleagues question conventional concepts about the cause of thyroid tissue stunning, pointing to the early destructive effects of therapeutic 131I rather than the results of diagnostic imaging.
Page 1406

Diabetes and the transplanted heart: Bengel and colleagues use molecular-targeted PET to investigate the effect of diabetes mellitus on the regenerational capacity of sympathetic neurons in cardiac transplant recipients.
Page 1413
Evaluating coronary vasomotor function: Siegrist and colleagues study the repeatability of endothelium-related myocardial blood flow responses to cold pressor testing as assessed by PET in groups of tobacco smokers and nonsmokers.
Page 1420
Exploring the blood–brain barrier: Takano and colleagues apply 11C-verapamil PET to the characterization of P-glycoprotein functional differences at the blood–brain barrier in individuals with different polymorphisms of the MDR1 gene and outline implications for future studies.
Page 1427
Angiogenesis imaging in breast cancer: Bach-Gansmo and colleagues describe a proof-of-concept efficacy and safety study of a novel technetium-labeled agent for breast cancer scintigraphy.
Page 1434

Imaging breast cancer with 18F-FDG: Mavi and colleagues assess the utility of 18F-FDG PET dual-time-point techniques in detecting primary breast tumors and investigate the relationship between tracer uptake changes over time and histopathologic subtypes.
Page 1440

PET in advanced NPC: Chan and colleagues compare whole-body 18F-FDG PET and conventional work-up in monitoring response after primary curative therapy for locoregional advanced nasopharyngeal carcinoma and look at the effects of PET findings on subsequent patient management.
Page 1447
PET vs. SSR scintigraphy: Montravers and colleagues study the efficacy of 18F-FDOPA PET in the diagnosis and follow-up of different types of well-differentiated digestive endocrine tumors and compare the performance of PET with that of 111In-pentetreotide somatostatin receptor scintigraphy.
Page 1455

One-take cholecystitis assessment: Krishnamurthy and Krishnamurthy analyze the effects of opioid intake on scintigraphy of gallbladder response to cholecystokinin-8 and discuss the role of this approach in evaluating acute and chronic cholecystitis in a single hepatobiliary study.
Page 1463
Refining peptide receptor therapy: Cremonesi and colleagues review published reports of peptide receptor radionuclide therapy dosimetry, including radiopharmaceutical characteristics, data processing, dosimetric outcomes, and methods to protect critical organs, and describe a model for determining biological effective dose.
Page 1467
Tailored protocols with promise: Dimitrios and colleagues provide dosimetric data on intrahepatic 111In-DTPA-d-Phe1-octreotide therapy for neuroendocrine tumors with overexpression of somatostatin receptors and recommend a patient-specific dosimetric protocol to optimize planning and efficacy.
Page 1476
Delivery of adenoviral vectors: ter Horst and colleagues evaluate whether a convection-enhanced approach improves intratumoral delivery of adenoviral vectors in malignant gliomas and compare this with single- and multiple-injection strategies.
Page 1483
Imaging cardiac denervation: Raffel and colleagues characterize the dependence of retention of the norepinephrine analog HED on nerve density in rats with graded levels of chemically induced cardiac denervation and discuss potential applications for 11C-HED PET imaging in humans.
Page 1490

SPECT/CT and atherosclerosis: Isobe and colleagues evaluate radiolabeled annexin SPECT/CT imaging in transgenic mouse models of human atherosclerosis to characterize lesions and explore the effects of a high fat/cholesterol diet on imaging parameters.
Page 1497
Antiangiogenic gene transfer therapy: Schmidt and colleagues investigate the effects of TnI gene transfer on endothelial cell apoptosis/proliferation in vitro and on hepatoma growth, perfusion, vascularization, apoptosis/proliferation, and gene expression in vivo.
Page 1506

Monitoring angiogenesis strategies: Kunz and colleagues examine the complex cellular and molecular effects of angiopoietin-2 gene transfer in a rat hepatoma model.
Page 1515

p53 and tracer uptake: Smith and colleagues investigate the relationship between high 18F-FDG uptake in breast cancer and decreased expression of wild-type p53 and discuss the implications of their findings for pretreatment PET imaging in patients with breast cancer.
Page 1525
Characterizing 11C-verapamil transfer: Ikoma and colleagues validate the quantification methods for 11C-verapamil transfer from plasma to the brain in healthy humans in a companion study to that by Takano and colleagues appearing in this issue of JNM.
Page 1531
Chemotherapy and tracer uptake: van Waarde and colleagues explore the effects of 3 cytotoxic agents on early changes in uptake of 6 PET tracers in cultured glioma cells and describe potential predictors of therapeutic response.
Page 1538
Improved detection of cell death: Tait and colleagues challenge the notion that annexin V molecules derivatized by amine-directed bifunctional agents retain full bioactivity and discuss the implications for site-specific labeling methods in detecting apoptosis.
Page 1546
ON THE COVER
Human troponin I efficiently inhibits tumor growth by decreasing vascularization. Dynamic PET measurements with H215O were performed to test for differences in tissue perfusion between troponin I–expressing (bottom) and wild-type (top) Morris hepatomas. Pharmacokinetic analysis of the PET data revealed that tumor perfusion was less in troponin I tumors than in wild- type tumors. The ability to measure the decreased perfusion resulting from a decrease in vascularization makes PET a promising method for the monitoring of antiangiogenic gene therapy.

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