Biodistributions and Imaging in early-stage drug development research: a comparative analysis

Dedicated small-animal imaging systems have been continuously evolving, and their applications are strongly motivated by preclinical in vivo validation of drug effectiveness and safety, especially in nuclear imaging such as single photon emission tomography (SPECT) and positron emission tomography (PET). While the evolution in preclinical imaging is quite significant in recent years, the gold standard in any preclinical oncology experiment is still ex vivo biodistributions, an invasive method that requires many animals to be used. However, ex vivo biodistributions use metric scales that are, in some cases, more consistent between animals and humans.