Hindawi Publishing Corporation BioMed Research International Volume 2014, Article ID 674063, 12 pages http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2014/674063 Review Article 6-[18F]Fluoro-L-DOPA: A Well-Established Neurotracer with Expanding Application Spectrum and Strongly Improved Radiosyntheses M. Pretze,1 C. Wängler,2 and B. Wängler1 1 Molecular Imaging and Radiochemistry, Department of Clinical Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University, Theodor-Kutzer-Ufer 1-3, 68167 Mannheim, Germany 2 Biomedical Chemistry, Department of Clinical Radiology and Nuclear Medicine, Medical Faculty Mannheim of Heidelberg University, 68167 Mannheim, Germany Correspondence should be addressed to B. Wangler;¨
[email protected] Received 26 February 2014; Revised 17 April 2014; Accepted 18 April 2014; Published 28 May 2014 Academic Editor: Olaf Prante Copyright © 2014 M. Pretze et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. 18 For many years, the main application of [ F]F-DOPA has been the PET imaging of neuropsychiatric diseases, movement disorders, and brain malignancies. Recent findings however point to very favorable results of this tracer for the imaging of other malignant diseases such as neuroendocrine tumors, pheochromocytoma, and pancreatic adenocarcinoma expanding its application spectrum. With the application of this tracer in neuroendocrine tumor imaging, improved radiosyntheses have been developed. Among these, 18 the no-carrier-added nucleophilic introduction of fluorine-18, especially, has gained increasing attention as it gives [ F]F-DOPA in higher specific activities and shorter reaction times by less intricate synthesis protocols.