title: The scope and potentials of functional radionuclide imaging towards advancing personalized medicine in oncology: emphasis on PET-CT.
abstract: Behavioral heterogeneity within a given patient cohort has been a major challenge in clinical practice and is probably most prominently observed in the field of oncology. This has been the prime impetus of the cutting-edge preclinical and clinical research studies over recent times, many of which seek to further stratify patients based on patients' genetic, proteomic, and metabolic profile (the three key components of "-omics" research), in order to select the appropriate therapy according to an individual's best-fit. Data from functional radionuclide imaging particularly that obtained from PET-CT, with regard to characterization of an individual's tumor phenotype, can play a very important role in answering some of the critical decision-making questions on an individual basis. The role of molecular imaging with PET, SPECT, and planar radionuclide technologies is not confined to early response assessment of administered therapeutics (which is its major benefit compared to conventional methods), rather it has a much broader perspective and encompasses multiple steps in decision making steps of patient management. The immense impact of the radionuclide-based molecular imaging techniques on the selection of an appropriate treatment (at initial diagnosis, during therapy, or after therapy) or in defining the tumor biology has been documented and increasingly recognized through both large and small-scale studies. However, there has been relatively less systematic effort towards the development of a successful and definitive clinical model of "personalized cancer medicine" (based on accurate disease triaging on an individual basis) by the medical community that would be suitable for routine adoption. In this paper, an endeavor has been made to explore the potential of this approach and underscore the areas that would require further critical evaluation to make this a reality.
authors.affiliation: Radiation Medicine Centre, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Tata Memorial Hospital Annexe, Parel, Mumbai, India. drsanb@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Sandip
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Basu
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D064847:Multimodal Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000000981:diagnostic imaging* / Q000628:therapy; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D057285:Precision Medicine; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed