The Cancer Cell Networks Program seeks to expand understanding of the pathways regulating cell growth/death and their derangement in tumor initiation and progression. This group of users uses novel experimental strategies, and emerging technology platforms to isolate the conditional dependencies in tumorigenic environments that represent authentic diagnostic or therapeutic targets.

As the first map of human genome was completed in 2000, unprecedented opportunities have become available to study human disease at molecular level. Since gene/protein expression profiles of particular tissues revealed by genomics/proteomics vary in different individuals, PET imaging affords the possibility to link these in vitro assays to imaging studies within living subjects. Given its noninvasive and quantitative features, PET imaging has been applied to identify the underlying molecular events in cancer initiation and progression.

The purpose of using PET in this group of projects is to validate the in vitro findings in live animal models. For instance, this group of users may be interested in the use of [¹⁸F]FHBG to image promoter activity of multiple genes differentially expressed in different tumor tissues through an innovative “reporter gene/reporter probe” strategy by linking the promoter of these genes to a reporter gene, HSV1-tk. They might also be interested in using [¹⁸F]FLT to study cancer cell proliferation in correlation with gene expression profile derived from their in vitro data in animal models.

Of note, interests have been raised in using [¹¹C]-methionine to assess amino acid metabolism in small tumors and early tumor recurrences and using ⁶⁴Cu-ATSM or ¹⁸F-MISO to monitor the oxygen level in tumors for the assessment of tumor resistance to radiation treatment.