Dual Modality PET/MR for Targeted Cancer Imaging

The PI of this project was:

This project was funded by: Radiology RD

The term of this project was: November 2016 to November 2016

The number of subjects scanned during this project was: 1

The high concentrations of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents required to achieve contrast has posed great challenges in the delivery of targeted agents to malignancies, and hence the imaging of most cancers. To date, very limited numbers of targeted MRI contrast agents for cancer have been reported in the scientific literature. In preliminary studies, DOTA(Gd)-404 exhibited selective uptake and retention in multiple cancer models as demonstrated by enhanced relaxivity on T1-weighted imaging in tumor-bearing mice up to 96 hours. To the best of our knowledge, DOTA(Gd)-404 is one of the first tumor-targeted MRI contrast agents that demonstrates good uptake and retention in multiple cancer types. This may allow the detection of cancer and metastases with very high spatial resolution that can be achieved with MRI imaging. Furthermore, new applications such as simultaneous PET/MR with our previously established and new alkylphosphocholine (APC) analogs for PET imaging may be investigated with this novel methodology.