The goal of this Pre-ICMIC planning effort is to bring clinical oncologists, basic scientists, and imaging scientists together to develop new research collaborations. This will be through weekly seminars and monthly research retreats. These interdisciplinary collaborations are likely to lead to novel and significant advances in the use of imaging in caring for cancer patients. We intend to particularly emphasize the use of imaging in evaluating cancer therapy. Medical imaging, with X-rays, CT, MRI, PET, and nuclear medicine scans, has been used successfully for many years in diagnosing cancer. It has been used for evaluating therapy, but in a very unsophisticated way; simply determining if a tumor has increased or decreased in size. There are far more sensitive ways to determine tumor viability including measurements of blood flow, oxygenation, metabolism, and membrane integrity. There are also methods to evaluate delivery of drugs to tumors, by labeling with radioactive or magnetic tracers and imaging with PET or MRI. We intend to discuss and possibly study many of these approaches. Gene therapy is an area of specific focus. There is strong support for studies in this area and we plan to take advantage of the existing Gene Transfer Vector Core and Center for Gene Therapy of Cystic Fibrosis and Other Genetic Diseases that are active centers at the University of Iowa. There is strong institutional support for oncology research in general. The University of Iowa recently was designated an NCI Cancer Center. This designation helps solidify and strengthen our commitment to cancer research. An unusual resource within the Department of Radiology is the section of Free Radical and Radiation Biology. This is a strong research group with a specific interest in using gene therapy. This interest has led to work with the iodine symporter gene as a reporter gene and the possibility of imaging it with a wide variety of iodine isotopes and iodine analogs. Three of the potential developmental projects are involved with this reporter gene: in validating its use in vivo, its use for tracking insertion of a gene for manganese superoxide dismutase, a free radical scavenger, and for tracking insertion and expression of p53 injected into tumors by sub-selective catheterization. We also intend to explore the use of novel heavy metal labels to follow viral vector delivery with MRI and CT. PET imaging of F18 fluorothymidine will be used as a way to assess the response to chemotherapy very early after treatment. Tumor glucose metabolism will be imaged to assess oxidative stress and as an indicator of tumor susceptibility to treatment.
