Authors: N. Just, N. Guilbaud, P. Genne, K. Locke
Oncodesign Biotechnology; MediciNova, Inc.
Anti-vascular and anti-angiogenic drugs are currently of great interest in the treatment of cancer (1-2). These drugs selectively disrupt tumor blood vessels or inhibit their formation. MediciNova is developing a novel vascular disrupting agent (MN-029) that reversibly disrupts the tubulin cytoskeleton of proliferating tumor endothelial cells and shuts down tumor blood flow. For clinical trials and the further development of antivascular therapeutics, methods for evaluating the vascular response of tumors to treatment are urgently required. Dynamic Contrast-Enhanced MR imaging (DCE-MRI) and T2*techniques were used with success to assess the tumor response to anti-vascular treatments non-invasively showing the usefulness of biomarkers such as Ktrans (3). In this study, we characterized the blood flow changes induced by MN-029 in Calu-6 human lung tumors using DCE-MRI and T2* techniques.