MRI to assess vascular disruptive agents

Abstract

A number of clinically applicable imaging techniques are able to assess the antivascular effects of antiangiogenic drugs and vascular disruptive agents (VDAs) via changes induced in functional kinetic parameters. These techniques include dynamic contrast enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI), dynamic susceptibility enhanced MRI, diffusion MRI, positron emission tomography (PET) with oxygen labelled water, perfusion/functional computed tomography (CT) and microbubble enhanced ultrasound. Each of these techniques yield quantitative or semi-quantitative kinetic parameters which can be related to blood flow, blood volume, extraction fraction, and vessel permeability. Changes in some of these imaging biomarkers can be used during the drug development process because they can serve as pharmacodynamic indicators of vascular activity in vivo. In this chapter, we discuss imaging techniques for the assessment of tumour vascularity that have been used to assess VDAs in clinical studies, with an emphasis on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) methods. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC.