Researchers Discover Better Ways of Tracking Cancer Therapies Using Imaging Tags

Posted by PET-CT Las Colinas on December 28th, 2019

Researchers have discovered a better way to track therapies using imaging tags and PET/CT scanners. They will use special imaging marks to monitor the movement of cancer therapy in the body.

This new method will help to measure the success of CAR T. CAR T is an immunotherapy where a patient’s immune cells are genetically modified and inserted back into their body to destroy cancer. This type of therapy has revolutionized cancer care, but doctors still need to view the way cells travel in order to measure the progress.

Currently, doctors have to regularly biopsy tumors in order to know if a cell or gene therapy is still in the body. This method does not offer accurate measurements of the therapy. With the new technology, doctors will quantitatively see the location and number of CAR T cells that have stayed in the body for a while, indicating the potential efficacy and durability of the therapy.

In most cases, PET scanners are used by physicians to monitor the efficacy of cancer treatments. But since CAR T cells are identical in appearance to the immune cells in the body, tracking them can be difficult. Scientists have alleviated this roadblock by successfully engineering CAR T cells with an enzyme produced from bacteria.

Before, CAR T cells would be tagged genetically with a PET reporter gene before injecting them back into mice. A PET/CT scan was used to track their movement. As a result, CAR T cells would accumulate in the spleen a week later. In antigen-positive tumors, the cells would accumulate after 13 days.

The research team also observed that the immune cells in the body failed to identify or attack the CAR T cells as foreign invaders. They are now planning to use the reporter gene-radio tracer pairing on human patients in a clinical trial to test its efficacy.

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PET / CT of Las Colinas was developed with both patients and physicians in mind and our services have been used for various types of disease; primarily in detecting, staging and monitoring cancer, but also in heart disease and brain disorders.

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PET-CT Las Colinas
Joined: December 30th, 2017
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