(March 30, 2022) Webinar: Imaging Hypoxia

Overview:

In this webinar, Katie will discuss the role hypoxia plays in disease progression and treatment response, specifically in cancer. She will also dive into the various molecular imaging technologies that can be used to visualize and assess hypoxia in preclinical cancer models. Some modalities that will be covered include magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), and optical imaging. 

Topics to be covered:

• What is hypoxia?
• Is there a link between hypoxia and cancer?
• What imaging modalities can be used to visualize hypoxia in vivo?
• What are the advantages and limitations of each technique?
• What are some applications of hypoxia imaging?

Hypoxia has been shown to influence many facets of cancer including tumor growth, treatment response, and metastatic potential. Thus, the ability to noninvasively visualize hypoxia in vivo may be critical to understanding the underlying tumor biology, guiding treatment plans, and determining prognosis in the clinic.

Many different modalities have been used for preclinical hypoxia imaging. While some techniques have been around for decades and have extensive data behind them, others are emerging technologies that aim to overcome existing limitations in the field. Choosing the right modality can be challenging and is dependent on experimental conditions including tumor model, animal strain, and the desired measurement, as each technique will target a different aspect of hypoxia. In this webinar, we will discuss some molecular imaging techniques that can be used to visualize and characterize tumor hypoxia including MRI, PET, optical, and PAI. We will compare the various options, discuss the advantages and limitations of each approach, and show some examples of how scientists are using these techniques within their research.

References

Rebecca A. D’Alonzo, Suki Gill, Pejman Rowshanfarzad, Synat Keam, Kelly M. MacKinnon, Alistair M. Cook & Martin A. Ebert (2021) In vivo noninvasive preclinical tumor hypoxia imaging methods: a review, International Journal of Radiation Biology, 97:5, 593-631, DOI: 10.1080/09553002.2021.1900943