Scientific Publication: Imaging in vivo cell death

Imaging cell death for early detection of treatment efficacy

Today, there is intensive ongoing research for clinical tools that can accurately measure the effect of cancer therapy as early as possible since it creates opportunities to personalize treatments. An effective way is measuring cell death instead of volumetric and morphometric changes in response to therapy. Molecular changes occur much faster and with the right target and imaging technique, this can show superior sensitivity and specificity for assessing the effectiveness of a therapy.

The authors of this publication use ^99mTc-duramycin instead of ^99mTc-Annexin V to image and quantify in vivo cell death. By using the MILabs’ U-SPECT/CT system, they were able to demonstrate that in animal models, ^99mTc-duramycin has a more favorable pharmacokinetic profile than Annexin V tracers, thus raising the chances for a successful translation to the clinic. 

Scientific Publication

Summary

This publication utilizes the MILabs U-SPECT^TM imaging system for high resolution in vivo validation and quantification of ^99mTc-duramycin, validated by histology and autoradiography.
Imaging and quantitation results demonstrated the potential of ^99mTc-duramycin for early monitoring of treatment response, using a human colorectal cancer model treated with both chemo- and radiotherapy, and combinations of both.