Increased NIV Molecular Imaging Technologies Needed for Cancer Care

These include helping identify patients that would benefit from targeted therapy, monitoring drug movement in the body and helping to guide drug dosing while minimizing side effects. Molecular imaging can also be used to monitor the effectiveness of drug treatments. The combined data can help predict patient outcomes and overall survival.

Lead author of the study, David A. Mankoff, MD, PhD, said, "Many of these methods are already being studied in clinical trials, but the path from clinical trials to routine clinical use is seldom easy. Molecular imaging methods face some particularly challenging hurdles such as the need to deliver the short-lived imaging probes to centers performing the imaging. We don't have a good framework yet for moving these potentially powerful diagnostic tools into routine clinical use. Among other things, we need to bring the imaging and oncology communities together to find the best way forward. In that case, molecular imaging could have directed treatment to patients highly likely to benefit and spared many other patients the toxic effects and costs of ineffective therapy."

Related Links:
Abramson Cancer Center
Perelman School of Medicine