PQ - 13 Can tumors be detected when they are two to three orders of magnitude smaller than those currently detected with in vivo imaging modalities? Background: Current imaging modalities allow detection of tumors composed of approximately 107 cells or in the range of 1 cubic millimeter. Any increase in imaging sensitivity provides valuable advances in tumor detection; however, a major increase in detection sensitivity would provide a radical change in how we might employ imagining in clinical practice. While new advances are continually being reported and are currently the goal of NCI’s imaging grant portfolio, here we call for methods that might radically change the sensitivity of these imaging methods. Feasibility: This question calls for a huge jump in imaging sensitivity. How this increase might be achieved is left to the imagination of the community. However, one can recognize that strategies to increase sensitivity might include such approaches as matching imaging probes with biologic targets that provide some enzymatic amplification, developing much more sensitive imaging probes, or greatly improved camera sensitivity. Implications of success: The ability to detect very small clusters of cells in patients and in experimental cancer models is important from both detection and therapeutic perspectives—to find cancer at its earliest stages, to understand how and when tumors spread, to study how dissemination correlates with malignant progression, to improve strategies for treatment with precisely targeted radiation or drugs, and to monitor therapeutic responses. |
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