Medical Physics Seminar – Monday, April 27, 2015
Cameron Symposium - "Interrogating Cancer with Zr-89 Radiopharmaceuticals and PET"
Jason S. Lewis, PhD, Emily Tow Jackson Chair in Oncology; Vice Chair for Research, Dept of Radiology;Chief, Radiochemistry & Imaging Sciences Service
Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
The use of Positron Emission Tomography (PET) for cancer imaging is a well-established and widely used molecular imaging modality both in clinical and research settings. PET offers the ability to quantitatively measure biological and receptor-based processes using a wide spectrum of specifically designed radiopharmaceuticals exploiting small molecule-, peptide-, antibody- and nanoparticle-based platforms.
One novel avenue of application is the PET and molecular imaging of serum biomarkers. One prominent shortcoming in oncology is a high frequency of false positive indications for malignant disease in upfront diagnosis. Because one common cause of false positivism is biomarker production from benign disorders in unrelated host tissues, we hypothesized that probing the site(s) of biomarker secretion with an imaging tool could be a broadly useful strategy to deconvolute the meaning of foreboding but inconclusive circulating biomarker levels. Recent approaches with antibody-based platforms to image biomarkers will be discussed