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Case Western Reserve University and University Hospitals Health System |
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CCIR News
Congratulations go out to Dr. Baowei Fei. Baowei’s R21/R33 NIH grant application entitled “Multimodality in vivo Molecular Imaging for Prostate PDT” received a score of 152 and a percentile of 10.7. Just-in-Time information is currently being submitted to NIH. Below, please find a grant abstract. Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer mortality in American men. The long-term objective of this research is to develop novel multimodality molecular imaging techniques for improved early detection and image-guided therapy for prostate cancer. At our institution, a second generation photosensitizing drug, phthalocyanine Pc 4 has been evaluated for photodynamic therapy (PDT) in the Case Comprehensive Cancer Center. This drug is currently undergoing pre-clinical mechanistic studies and two Phase I clinical trials for the treatment of dermal cancers, including cancers that are metastatic to the skin. Members of this investigating team have already proven the efficacy of Pc 4-PDT in the treatment of breast, ovarian, and colon cancer in animal models. Recently, the co-PI, Dr. Nancy Oleinick’s group found that Pc 4-PDT induces apoptosis in prostate cancer cells in vitro. We are now extending this relatively new treatment modality for prostate cancer therapy. In the R21 phase, we will perform in vivo PDT to treat human prostate cancer xenografts in a mouse model. State-of-the-art in vivo molecular imaging techniques will be developed to assess the PDT efficacy. Image fusion and registration of different modalities and quantitative image analysis methods will be developed to combine functional biochemical images with high-resolution anatomic images. An early image-based surrogate biomarker of the tumor response to PDT will be identified to predict the success of the therapy. In the R33 phase, the multimodality imaging techniques as developed in the R21 phase will be optimized and applied to human prostate cancer patients for improved diagnosis and treatment planning. Furthermore, we will demonstrate the feasibility of multimodality image-guided prostate PDT in a canine prostate model. The noninvasive imaging techniques as will be created from this study can be applied to other cancer. They can be used to detect cancer at very early stage, optimize treatment planning for individual’s therapy, utilize image-guided minimally therapy, and monitor the therapeutic efficacy. Obviously, this imaging strategy has great potential to improve the public health by improving diagnosis and therapy of cancer.
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