Optical molecular imaging in drug discovery and clinical development.

Recently, the drug discovery process has greatly benefited from a wealth of novel druggable targets following the sequencing of the human genome and the parallel development of combinatorial chemistry and high-throughput screening technologies. The large number of drug candidates generated by this combined approach requires an evolution and refinement of in vivo measurement methodologies and animal models to cope with this flux of novel compounds. At the same time, drug developers are looking for translational biomarkers that can facilitate the clinical evaluation of the most promising molecules. Imaging technologies are particularly well suited to help address these various challenges. The authors focus the interest of this review on optical molecular imaging technology as well as reviewing how this technology is being integrated in various therapeutic areas, and how it has started to impact the preclinical drug discovery process. Finally, the potential clinical applications of optical molecular imaging are discussed.