Guest editorial

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THE CURRENT issue of Seminars in Nuclear Medicine is devoted to the applications of molecular biology in nuclear medicine. Nuclear medicine and molecular biology are clearly converging, and the result is the birth of novel type of imaging—molecular imaging. It is actually somewhat surprising that this process of convergence has not started earlier because nuclear medicine has always had the capabilities of studying the processes in the body on the molecular level by using radiotracers at picomolar concentrations. One of the reasons for such a delay could be the limitations in familiarity of practicing nuclear medicine physicians and radiologists with the latest developments in molecular biology. The purpose of this issue is to fill this gap to some extent by acquainting them with the modern advances that can be anticipated in the field of molecular imaging. The topics covered in this issue range from the basic science of proteomics and genomics to application of molecular biology in clinical nuclear medicine and cardiology. Some contributions are also devoted to the latest developments in gene therapy and peptide technology, which are leading nuclear medicine even further—into the field of cancer therapy and other diseases that should be called molecular therapy—so the potential of unique tools that nuclear medicine possesses can at last be fully realized.