Imaging Virus-Associated Cancer

Abstract

Cancer remains an important and growing health problem. Researchers have made great progress in defining genetic and molecular alterations that contribute to cancer formation and progression. Molecular imaging can identify appropriate patients for targeted cancer therapy and may detect early biochemical changes in tumors during therapy, some of which may have important prognostic implications. Progress in this field continues largely due to a union between molecular genetics and advanced imaging technology. This review details uses of molecular-genetic imaging in the context of tumor-associated viruses. Under certain conditions, and particularly during pharmacologic stimulation, gammaherpesviruses will express genes that enable imaging and therapy in vivo. The techniques discussed are readily translatable to the clinic.

Using [18F]FBAU for imaging brain tumor progression in an F98/tk-luc glioma-bearing rat model

“…[ 124 I]FIAU has been reported to be the first PET probe used in the HSV1-tk reporter gene expression system (11,30). Although FIAU is preferentially phosphorylated by HSV1-thymidine kinase (TK) compared to mammalian TK, a certain amount of FIAU is accumulated in cells which do not express HSV1-TK resulting in non-specific signals (31) For the purpose of tracing tumor growth progression, molecular imaging techniques other than traditional caliper measurement have been developed. A statistical correlation was developed to correlate the relationship between anatomical size and bioluminescent intensity collected from ROI of the tumors in a brain-tumor bearing animal model (23).…”