A new PET probe, (18)F-tetrafluoroborate, for the sodium/iodide symporter: possible impacts on nuclear medicine

Abstract

As early as 1915, it was found that iodide is required in the thyroid gland for the production of thyroid hormones. Since then, radioiodines have been used as tracers in thyroid function tests and as agents for the treatment of hyperthyroidism and benign thyroid diseases. Furthermore, knowledge of the importance of the role played by iodine transport in thyroid cancer cells provides the rationale for the use of radioiodines to diagnose and treat thyroid cancer (1, 2). In fact, the clinical utilization of radioiodines led to the birth of nuclear medicine. Today, it is known that the iodide pump is a sodium/iodide symporter (NIS), an intrinsic membrane protein of the thyroid gland follicular cells (3, 4), and that the NIS-catalysed accumulation of iodide in cells from the interstitium is achieved against its transmembrane electrochemical gradient, which is maintained by sodium-potassium adenosine triphosphatase. The identification of the human NIS (hNIS) gene created many new diagnostic and therapeutic opportunities, and in particular, researchers are currently investigating the use of hNIS as a reporter gene for gene therapy and molecular and genomic imaging (5).