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Nuclear Imaging of Tumors
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Above: Longitudinal PET images of a mouse showing uptake of radiolabeled FDG.
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The long-range goal of this project is to develop new tracers for positron emission tomography (PET) and new approaches to interpret PET images for prediction of cancer therapy response. PET is a non-invasive approach to visualizing and characterizing tumors in patients. Presently, most PET tracers being used identify tumor location and the presence of small metastases. More recently, investigators have begun to look at the characteristics of tumor, such as their relative growth rate and oxygenation profile. Our studies focus on using PET tracers to identify these tumor characteristics in vivo that allow for the prediction of tumor response to cytotoxic therapy. Being able to derive this information would be valuable in monitoring and guiding cancer therapy. At present, our work focuses on identifying p53 gene product integrity. The p53 gene product plays an important role in tumor growth rate, tumor aggressiveness, and tumor response to cancer therapy.
The work is being done in collaboration with Drs. J. Grierson and K. Krohn from the Department of Radiology.
This work is supported by National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health.
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Copyright © 2004 University of Washington
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