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Molecular imaging strategies to approach the tumour microenvironment
2017-05-03 @ 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Molecular imaging strategies to approach the tumour microenvironment
Michel Eisenblätter, MD, PhD
Translational Research Imaging Center; Institut für Klinische Radiologie, Universitätsklinikum Münster und
Comprehensive Cancer Imaging Centre, Division of Imaging Sciences & Biomedical Engineering, King’s College London
Kolloquium der Abteilung 8
Medizinphysik und metrologische Informationstechnik
Tumours are not a homogeneous mass of cancer cells but comprise a variety of tumour-associated immune cells, stromal and endothelial cells. It is this neatly organised interplay that ensures a nutrient supply for the growing tumour, allows tumours to grow unharmed from anti-tumour immunity and promotes local invasion.
While early cancer therapy widely ignored the fact that a plethora of host cells is involved in malignant disease, more recent cancer therapy acknowledges and even uses this fact for more efficient treatment. Anti-vascular and immune check-point therapy directly address components of the tumour microenvironment (TME).Diagnostic medicine however still doesn’t hold sufficient means to accompany TME-centred therapy with regards to therapy selection or monitoring.
Target-specific molecular imaging in combination with selected serum parameters can provide criteria for patient stratification and indicators for specific therapy response. For this, optical and nuclear imaging approaches have been investigated. The visualisation and measurement of abundance and activity of TME key components such as immunomodulatory monocytes is reflective of the state of tumour-mediated reorganisation of the TME and predicts the future tumour development. Similarly, immune-remodelling in premetastatic tissue, supposedly initiated by tumour-secreted extracellular vesicles, can be detected and used as a predictor of metastatic tumour spread.
Fostering cancer research and the search for potential therapeutic targets, the combination of gene reporter imaging with target-specific imaging and serum analysis will allow for further characterisation of tumour-associated immune cells and their respective differentiation state in the tumour vicinity.