PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Joanna J. Bartnicka
AU  - Philip J. Blower
TI  - Insights into Trace Metal Metabolism in Health and Disease from PET: “PET Metallomics”
AID  - 10.2967/jnumed.118.212803
DP  - 2018 Sep 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - 1355--1359
VI  - 59
IP  - 9
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/59/9/1355.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/59/9/1355.full
SO  - J Nucl Med2018 Sep 01; 59
AB  - Essential trace metals such as copper, zinc, iron, and manganese perform critical functions in cellular and physiologic processes including catalytic, regulatory, and signaling roles. Disturbed metal homeostasis is associated with the pathogenesis of diseases such as dementia, cancer, and inherited metabolic abnormalities. Intracellular pathways involving essential metals have been extensively studied but whole-body fluxes and transport between different compartments remain poorly understood. The growing availability of PET scanners and positron-emitting isotopes of key essential metals, particularly 64Cu, 63Zn, and 52Mn, provide new tools with which to study these processes in vivo. This review highlights opportunities that now present themselves, exemplified by studies of copper metabolism that are in the vanguard of a new research front in molecular imaging: “PET metallomics.”