A PET Imaging Strategy for Interrogating Target Engagement and Oncogene Status in Pancreatic Cancer. Academic Article uri icon

Overview

abstract

  • PURPOSE: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most deadly cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of less than 10%. Physicians often rely on biopsy or CT to guide treatment decisions, but these techniques fail to reliably measure the actions of therapeutic agents in PDAC. KRAS mutations are present in >90% of PDAC and are connected to many signaling pathways through its oncogenic cascade, including extracellular regulated kinase (ERK) and MYC. A key downstream event of MYC is transferrin receptor (TfR), which has been identified as a biomarker for cancer therapeutics and imaging. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN: In this study, we aimed to test whether zirconium-89 transferrin ([89Zr]Zr-Tf) could measure changes in MYC depending on KRAS status of PDAC, and assess target engagement of anti-MYC and anti-ERK-targeted therapies. RESULTS: Mice bearing iKras*p53* tumors showed significantly higher (P < 0.05) uptake of [89Zr]Zr-Tf in mice withdrawn from inducible oncogenic KRAS. A therapy study with JQ1 showed a statistically significant decrease (P < 0.05) of [89Zr]Zr-Tf uptake in drug versus vehicle-treated mice bearing Capan-2 and Suit-2 xenografts. IHC analysis of resected PDAC tumors reflects the data observed via PET imaging and radiotracer biodistribution. CONCLUSIONS: Our study demonstrates that [89Zr]Zr-Tf is a valuable tool to noninvasively assess oncogene status and target engagement of small-molecule inhibitors downstream of oncogenic KRAS, allowing a quantitative assessment of drug delivery.

publication date

  • September 18, 2018

Research

keywords

  • Adenocarcinoma
  • Carcinoma, Pancreatic Ductal
  • Positron-Emission Tomography
  • Proto-Oncogene Proteins p21(ras)

Identity

PubMed Central ID

  • PMC6320277

Scopus Document Identifier

  • 85059486084

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

  • 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-18-1485

PubMed ID

  • 30228208

Additional Document Info

volume

  • 25

issue

  • 1