Instrumentation and radiopharmaceutical validation.

Although the promise of new positron emission tomography (PET) imaging agents is great, the process of bringing these agents to commercialization remains in its infancy. There are no PET products today that have gone through the full clinical and chemistry development process required to gain marketing approval by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The purpose of this paper was to review validation from the perspective of the chemistry, manufacturing and controls (CMC) section of an FDA filing, as well as the validation requirements described in FDA good manufacturing practice (GMP) regulations, guidance documents and general chapters of the US Pharmacopeia (USP). The review includes discussion of validation from development to commercial production of PET radiopharmaceuticals with a special emphasis on equipment and instrumentation used in production and testing. The goal is to stimulate a dialog that leads to the standardization of industry practices and regulatory requirements for validation practices in PET.