Non-invasive metabolic imaging of oncogenic events in brain tumors
Key Learning Points
- Oncogenes and tumor suppress induce metabolic reprogramming in cancer
- Hyperpolarized 13C and deuterium metabolic imaging are novel clinically translatable methods of monitoring metabolism in vivo
- Metabolic imaging provides the unique opportunity to devise methods that can enhance assessment of tumor burden and treatment response in cancer
What to expect
Georgios Batsios and Pavithra Viswanath will discuss the relationship between oncogenic events and metabolic reprogramming in cancer. They will then describe our recent successes in using novel, cutting-edge metabolic imaging modalities such as hyperpolarized 13C and deuterium metabolic imaging for imaging tumor burden and early response to therapy in brain tumors.
Summary
Advances in genomics have identified an array of clinically relevant mutations that drive tumor initiation and maintenance. There is an urgent need to utilize this genomic information to improve patient outcomes. Many oncogenes induce metabolic reprogramming, which is a hallmark of cancer, and this relationship provides the unparalleled opportunity to identify metabolic imaging biomarkers that enhance diagnosis and treatment response assessment for cancer patients. In this talk, we will describe the ways in which metabolic imaging can be used for monitoring oncogenic events in cancer and examine the ways in which these modalities can guide patient management.
Metabolic reprogramming is a fundamental hallmark of cancer, including brain tumors. The relationship between metabolic reprogramming and tumor growth provides the unparalleled opportunity to devise in vivo metabolic imaging methods for assessment of tumor burden and response to therapy in brain tumors.
Speakers
Georgios Batsios, PhD
Associate Specialist at UCSF
Georgios Batsios, PhD is an Associate Specialist at UCSF. After acquiring a PhD from the Institute of Biomedical Imaging of ETH Zurich with a focus in preclinical MR imaging, he moved to UCSF to apply 1H and hyperpolarized 13C methods for brain tumor and treatment response detection. Currently he works in optimizing and applying novel 2H and 13C methods to investigate brain tumor metabolism in adult and pediatric preclinical tumor models.
Dr. Pavithra Viswanath
Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF
Dr. Pavithra Viswanath is an Associate Professor in the Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at UCSF. She graduated with a PhD in Biochemistry from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. The overall vision of her research is to harness insights from tumor genetics, epigenetics, and biology to drive the preclinical development of novel, metabolic imaging biomarkers that will ultimately benefit patients by enabling the non-invasive assessment of tumor burden and response to therapy.