Research Progress of Radionuclide-Labeled PSMA Ligands in the Diagnosis and Treatment of Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is a malignant solid tumor with a high incidence in middle-aged and elderly men. At present, the diagnosis and treatment of PCa is limited and the sensitivity of the diagnostic method is not high, which is extremely unfavorable for the early diagnosis and late detection of PCa patients. Prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) is a type Ⅱ glutamate carboxypeptidase that is overexpressed on the surface of almost all PCa cells, and the degree of overexpression of PSMA increases with the progression, metastasis and recurrence of PCa, Therefore, PSMA can be used as a specific target for the diagnosis and treatment of PCa. In recent years, with the development of nuclear medicine instruments and radioactive molecular probes, some PET/CT and SPECT/CT molecular probes targeting PSMA, such as ¹¹¹In-capromab, ¹⁸F-DCFPyL, ^99mTc-MIP-1405, ¹³¹I-MIP-1095, ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-11 and ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA-617 have received extensive attention and application in the diagnosis, staging, biochemical recurrence detection and treatment of PCa. In this review, the latest research progress of PSMA ligands is summarized from the aspects of ligand affinity, selectivity, structure-activity relationship, in vivo metabolism and clinical application, which is expected to be beneficial to the research and development of new generation of PSMA inhibitors.