title: Bench to bedside molecular functional imaging in translational cancer medicine: to image or to imagine?
abstract: Ongoing research on malignant and normal cell biology has substantially enhanced the understanding of the biology of cancer and carcinogenesis. This has led to the development of methods to image the evolution of cancer, target specific biological molecules, and study the anti-tumour effects of novel therapeutic agents. At the same time, there has been a paradigm shift in the field of oncological imaging from purely structural or functional imaging to combined multimodal structure-function approaches that enable the assessment of malignancy from all aspects (including molecular and functional level) in a single examination. The evolving molecular functional imaging using specific molecular targets (especially with combined positron-emission tomography [PET] computed tomography [CT] using 2- [(18)F]-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose [FDG] and other novel PET tracers) has great potential in translational research, giving specific quantitative information with regard to tumour activity, and has been of pivotal importance in diagnoses and therapy tailoring. Furthermore, molecular functional imaging has taken a key place in the present era of translational cancer research, producing an important tool to study and evolve newer receptor-targeted therapies, gene therapies, and in cancer stem cell research, which could form the basis to translate these agents into clinical practice, popularly termed "theranostics". Targeted molecular imaging needs to be developed in close association with biotechnology, information technology, and basic translational scientists for its best utility. This article reviews the current role of molecular functional imaging as one of the main pillars of translational research.
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, UK; Department of Radiodiagnosis, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, 400012, India. Electronic address: abhishek.mahajan@kcl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mahajan
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, UK.
authors.forename: V
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Goh
authors.affiliation: Radiation Medicine Centre, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Tata Memorial Hospital Annexe, Mumbai, 400 012, India.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Basu
authors.affiliation: Department of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, 400012, India.
authors.forename: R
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Vaish
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, UK.
authors.forename: A J
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Weeks
authors.affiliation: Department of Radiodiagnosis, Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, 400012, India.
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Thakur
authors.affiliation: Division of Imaging Sciences and Biomedical Engineering, King's College London, UK; Department of Nuclear Medicine, Guy's and St Thomas NHS Foundation Trust Hospital, London, UK.
authors.forename: G J
authors.initials: GJ
authors.lastname: Cook
mesh_terms: D006801:Humans; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D057054:Molecular Imaging / Q000379:methods*; D064847:Multimodal Imaging; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000175:diagnosis*; D049268:Positron-Emission Tomography; D015899:Tomography, Emission-Computed, Single-Photon; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed; D057170:Translational Research, Biomedical / Q000379:methods*