Molecular imaging is a fast growing biomedical research that allows the visual representation, characterization and quantification of biological processes at the cellular and subcellular levels within intact living organisms. In vivo tracking of cells is an indispensable technology for development and optimization of cell therapy for replacement or renewal of damaged or diseased tissue using transplanted cells, often autologous cells. With outstanding advantages of bioluminescence imaging, the imaging approach is most commonly applied for in vivo monitoring of transplanted stem cells or immune cells in order to assess viability of administered cells with therapeutic efficacy in preclinical small animal models. In this review, a general overview of bioluminescence is provided and recent updates of in vivo cell tracking using the bioluminescence signal are discussed.

Molecular imaging, defined as the visual representation, characterization and quantification of biological processes at the cellular and subcellular levels within intact living organisms, can be obtained by various imaging technologies, including nuclear imaging methods. Imaging of normal thyroid tissue and differentiated thyroid cancer, and treatment of thyroid cancer with radioiodine rely on the expression of the sodium iodide symporter (NIS) in these cells. NIS is an intrinsic membrane protein with 13 transmembrane domains and it takes up iodide into the cytosol from the extracellular fluid. By transferring NIS function to various cells via gene transfer, the cells can be visualized with gamma or positron emitting radioisotopes such as Tc-99m, I-123, I-131, I-124 and F-18 tetrafluoroborate, which are accumulated by NIS. They can also be treated with beta- or alpha-emitting radionuclides, such as I-131, Re-186, Re-188 and At-211, which are also accumulated by NIS. This article demonstrates the diagnostic and therapeutic applications of NIS as a radionuclide-based reporter gene for trafficking cells and a therapeutic gene for treating cancers.

Our results suggested that the use of PET parameters together with the IPI score may be useful for detailed prediction of prognosis in ENKTL patients. Therefore, despite a lower IPI score, patients with high PET parameter values might be considered candidates for aggressive therapy to improve clinical outcomes.

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This study assessed the maximum standardized uptake value of metastatic axillary lymph nodes in patients with invasive ductal breast cancer (IDC) to determine the pretreatment prognostic value of 18 F-FDG PET/CT for disease-free survival (DFS). Methods: Sixty-five female IDC patients who had undergone pretreatment 18 F-FDG PET/CT and had pathologically confirmed axillary lymph node involvement without distant metastasis were enrolled. All patients showed complete remission after first-line treatment. To obtain nodal SUVmax, a transaxial image representing the highest 18 F-FDG uptake was carefully selected and a region of interest was manually drawn on the 18 F-FDG-accumulating lesion. Clinicopathologic parameters such as age, TNM stage, estrogen receptor status, progesterone receptor status, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 status, and primary-tumor and nodal SUVmax on PET were analyzed for their usefulness in predicting recurrence. Combinatorial effects and interactions between variables that were significant by univariate analysis were examined using multivariate Cox proportional-hazards models. Results: Twelve of 65 patients (18.5%) experienced recurrence during follow-up (median follow-up, 36 mo; range, 21-57 mo). Nodal SUVmax was significantly higher in patients with recurrence than in those who were disease-free (recurrence group: 5.2 6 2.3, vs. disease-free group: 1.9 6 1.9, P , 0.0001). A receiver-operating-characteristic curve demonstrated a nodal SUVmax of 2.8 (sensitivity, 91.7%; specificity, 86.8%; area under the curve, 0.890) to be the optimal cutoff for predicting DFS. Univariate analysis revealed that T stage, N stage, estrogen receptor status, and primary-tumor and nodal SUVmax correlated significantly with DFS. Among these 5 variables, only nodal SUVmax was found to be a single determinant of DFS by multivariate analysis (hazard ratio, 31.54; 95% confidence interval, 2.66-373.39; P 5 0.0065). Conclusion: Nodal SUVmax on pretreatment 18 F-FDG PET/CT may be an independent prognostic factor for disease recurrence in patients with IDC.