Journal
NATURE MEDICINE
Volume 20, Issue 11, Pages 1348-1353Publisher
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nm.3732
Keywords
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Funding
- US National Institutes of Health [R01 CA109558, R01 CA156177, U54 CA151662]
- Canadian Institutes of Health Research postdoctoral fellowship
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Lymph node biopsy is employed in many cancer surgeries to identify metastatic disease and to determine cancer stage, yet morbidity and diagnostic delays associated with lymph node biopsy could be avoided if noninvasive imaging of nodal involvement were reliable. Molecular imaging has potential in this regard; however, variable delivery and nonspecific uptake of imaging tracers have made conventional approaches ineffective clinically. Here we present a method of correcting for nonspecific uptake with injection of a second untargeted tracer that allows for quantification of tumor burden in lymph nodes. We confirmed the approach in an athymic mouse model of metastatic human breast cancer by targeting epidermal growth factor receptor, a cell surface receptor overexpressed by many cancers. We observed a significant correlation between in vivo (dual-tracer) and ex vivo measures of tumor burden (r = 0.97, P < 0.01), with an ultimate sensitivity of approximately 200 cells (potentially more sensitive than conventional lymph node biopsy).
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