Molecular Bio-Imaging Probe for Non-Invasive Differentiation Between Human Leiomyoma Versus Leiomyosarcoma

Abstract

Leiomyosarcoma is the most frequent subtype of the deadly uterine sarcoma and shares many common clinical grounds with leiomyoma, which is in turn the most common solid benign uterine neoplasm. With the recent progress in minimally invasive techniques for managing leiomyomas, accurate preoperative diagnosis of uterine masses has become the most important selection criterion for the safest therapeutic option. Therefore, different imaging modalities would be playing a key role in management of uterine masses. Testing for a sarcoma-specific promoter that expresses its downstream reporter gene only in leiomyosarcoma and not in leiomyoma or healthy uterine tissue. Adenoviral vectors were utilized both in vitro and in vivo to test the specificity of the promoters. Quantitative studies of downstream gene expression of these promoters was carried out both in vitro and in vivo. Our data indicated that human leiomyosarcoma cells highly expressed the reporter gene downstream to survivin promoter (Ad-SUR-LUC) when compared with benign leiomyoma or normal cells (p value of 0.05). Our study suggested that survivin is the unique promoter capable of distinguishing between the deadly sarcoma and the benign counterparts.