THURSDAY, June 5 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers say they can
cheaply and easily track how effective some cancer drugs are at
cutting off a tumor's blood supply by using the same gene that
gives fireflies their distinctive glow.
Using a technique called bioluminescence imaging (BLI), the
University of Teexas Southwestern Medical Center team added a
molecule substrate called luciferin to the bloodstream of mice with
human breast cancer tumors. The tumors had been altered to carry
the firefly gene, so they would emit light when the luciferin
reached them.
Using special light-detecting equipment, the researchers
detected a correlation between how much light was emitted and the
tumors' growth. The light emission fell drastically after a drug
designed to disrupt the blood flow to the cancer cells was given to
the mice.
"What we've done is offer proof-of-concept that BLI may be an
effective and cheaper method to assess drug development and
effectiveness," study senior author Dr. Ralph Mason, director of
the UT Southwestern Cancer Imaging Center, said in a prepared
statement. "The technique is not intended to be used for imaging
tumors or diagnosing cancer in humans, but it potentially allows us
to do much more efficient preclinical experiments."
He stressed that the effectiveness of BLI would depend greatly
on the tumor location.
The findings are available online and were expected to be
published in a future issue of
The Journal of the Federation of American Societies for
Experimental Biology.
BLI has some advantages over magnetic resonance imaging (MRI),
considered the gold standard of medical imaging, such as allowing
some additional detection of cell viability and lower cost, the
researchers said.
"Ultimately, the MRI is much more sophisticated and can do more,
but BLI is very straightforward," Mason said. "It's perfect for
evaluating new classes of drugs designed to cause acute vascular
changes in tumors, because the tests are inexpensive and easy to
do."
More information
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has more about
diagnostic imaging techniques.
