Promises and challenges of molecular imaging for detection and image-guided therapy of pancreatic cancer

Cancer Diagnostics Conference & Expo

June 13-15, 2016 Rome, Italy

Lily Yang

Emory University School of Medicine, USA

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: J Cancer Sci Ther

Abstract :

Development of novel targeted imaging agents holds great promise for early detection of pancreatic cancer. The ability of noninvasive imaging of biomarker expression in pancreatic cancers further offers a means for the application of precision oncology using targeted cancer therapy. We have developed receptor targeted and multi-imaging modality nanoparticles that are targeted to cell surface receptors highly expressed in pancreatic cancer and active tumor stromal cells, such as urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) and IGF-1R. This magnetic iron oxide nanoparticle platform coupled with near infrared (NIR) dye labeled targeting ligands has been demonstrated to be excellent NIR optical, MRI, photoacoustic, spectroscopic, and fluorescence tomography contrasts in human pancreatic tumor cell line derived or pancreatic cancer patient tissue (PDX) derived xenograft models in nude mice. Targeted delivery of the nanoparticles has also been demonstrated in a K-ras transgenic mouse pancreatic cancer model. Efficient accumulation of the nanoparticles in the early tumor lesions could be detected by NIR optical and MR imaging. We found that the majority of the receptor targeted nanoparticles in tumor tissues were localized in tumor stroma due to the presence of an intensive stromal barrier that limited nanoparticle delivery into tumor cells, which prevented accurately detection of the level of biomarker expression and efficient drug delivery in tumor cells. Therefore, tumor stromal barrier presents a major challenge for the application of targeted imaging nanoparticles to determine the level of biomarker expression in cancer cells for designing a biomarker targeted therapy.

Biography :

Email: lyang02@emory.edu