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Drug Development Series: Review

How molecular imaging is speeding up antiangiogenic drug development

¹ The Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology and Bio-X Program and ² Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, California

Requests for reprints: Xiaoyuan Chen, The Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford, Department of Radiology and Bio-X Program, Stanford University School of Medicine, 1201 Welch Road, P095, Stanford, CA 94305-5484. Phone: 650-725-0950; Fax: 650-736-7925. E-mail: shawchen{at}stanford.edu

Abstract

Drug development is a long process that generally spans about 10 to 15 years. The shift in recent drug discovery to novel agents against specific molecular targets highlights the need for more robust molecular imaging platforms. Using molecular probes, molecular imaging can aid in many steps of the drug development process, such as providing whole body readout in an intact system, decreasing the workload and speeding up drug development/validation, and facilitating individualized anticancer treatment monitoring and dose optimization. The main focus of this review is the recent advances in tumor angiogenesis imaging, and the targets include vascular endothelial growth factor and vascular endothelial growth factor receptor, integrin _vß₃, matrix metalloproteinase, endoglin (CD105), and E-selectin. Through tumor angiogenesis imaging, it is expected that a robust platform for understanding the mechanisms of tumor angiogenesis and evaluating the efficacy of novel antiangiogenic therapies will be developed, which can help antiangiogenic drug development in both the preclinical stage and the clinical settings. Molecular imaging has enormous potential in improving the efficiency of the drug development process, including the specific area of antiangiogenic drugs. [Mol Cancer Ther 2006;5(11):2624–33]

Grant support: National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering grant R21 EB001785; National Cancer Institute grants R21 CA102123, P50 CA114747, U54 CA119367, and R24 CA93862; Department of Defense grant W81XWH-04-1-0697, W81XWH-06-1-0665, W81XWH-06-1-0042, and DAMD17-03-1-0143; and Benedict Cassen Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Education and Research Foundation of the Society of Nuclear Medicine (W. Cai).

Received 7/10/06; revised 8/29/06; accepted 9/12/06.

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