Multimodality molecular imaging of disease progression in living subjects |
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Authors: | Pritha Ray |
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Institution: | (1) Advanced Centre for Treatment, Research and Education in Cancer, Tata Memorial Centre, Navi Mumbai, India |
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Abstract: | The enormous advances in our understanding of the progression of diseases at the molecular level have been supplemented by
the new field of ‘molecular imaging’, which provides for in vivo visualization of molecular events at the cellular level in living organisms. Molecular imaging is a noninvasive assessment
of gene and protein function, protein–protein interaction and/or signal transduction pathways in animal models of human disease
and in patients to provide insights into molecular pathogenesis. Five major imaging techniques are currently available to
assess the structural and functional alterations in vivo in small animals. These are (i) optical bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging techniques, (ii) radionuclide-based positron
emission tomography (PET) and single photon emitted computed tomography (SPECT), (iii) X-ray-based computed tomography (CT),
(iv) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and (v) ultrasound imaging (US). Functional molecular imaging requires an imaging probe
that is specific for a given molecular event. In preclinical imaging, involving small animal models, the imaging probe could
be an element of a direct (‘direct imaging’) or an indirect (‘indirect imaging’) event. Reporter genes are essential for indirect
imaging and provide a general integrated platform for many different applications. Applications of multimodality imaging using
combinations of bioluminescent, fluorescent and PET reporter genes in unified fusion vectors developed by us for recording
events from single live cells to whole animals with high sensitivity and accurate quantification are discussed. Such approaches
have immense potential to track progression of metastasis, immune cell trafficking, stem cell therapy, transgenic animals
and even molecular interactions in living subjects. |
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