Advances in the strategies for designing receptor-targeted molecular imaging probes for cancer research

Receptor targeted imaging has emerged as a promising tools for imaging tumor tissues. Receptor targeted molecular imaging confers critical information on clinicians including tumor location, expression level of certain receptors, and biological process, which enables early diagnosis and treatment of tumor to control cancer mortality. Receptor targeted probe design is a key to successfully deliver accurate information through many imaging modalities. When designing receptor targeted imaging probes, a variety of targeting receptors and imaging modalities are selected depending on type of cancer because overexpression of receptors are variant among tumors and each imaging modality has advantages and disadvantages. Subsequently selecting appropriate tumor targeting strategies is critical to efficiently visualize tumor of interest. In this review, we presented the strategies commonly used for designing receptor targeted probes and summarized the recent studies that implemented each strategies.