Researchers use imaging tags, PET/CT scanner to better track cancer therapies – Radiology Business

University of Pennsylvania scientists are piloting the use of special imaging markers to track the movement of one cancer therapy within the body.

Theyre doing so to gauge the success of CAR T, an immunotherapy that involves genetically modifying a patients immune cells and inserting them back into the body to kill cancer. Such therapy has revolutionized care for some cancers, but doctors need help viewing the travel of cells to measure progress. Early results of the experiment were detailed last month in Molecular Therapy.

"Currently, the only way to know whether a gene or cell therapy is still present in the body is to regularly biopsy tumors or draw blood, which offer very crude measurements of the therapy, Mark Sellmyer, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of radiology at Penn Medicine and lead author of the study, said in a statement. With our technology, clinicians would be able to see, quantitatively, the number and location of CAR T cells that have lasted in the body over time, which is an indicator of the therapy's durability and potential efficacy.

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Researchers use imaging tags, PET/CT scanner to better track cancer therapies - Radiology Business