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.

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.