The National Institutes of Health have granted researchers at UC San Diego two grants totaling $6.7 million to develop and test technologies for noninvasive examinations of immune cells found in tumors.
These immune cells, called macrophages, are involved in the body’s normal inflammatory responses, but they also make up a significant portion of solid tumors, the researchers said.
The density of macrophages in a tumor can affect how it responds to treatment, so the ability to count them noninvasively could help doctors decide which therapies will be most effective.
“Visualizing a patient’s inflammatory sites throughout the body will be invaluable for accurate clinical diagnosis and for planning precise therapeutic interventions,” said Eric Ahrens, a professor in the Department of Radiology at UCSD School of Medicine.
“Current approaches using biopsies are invasive, and some tumors are inaccessible to biopsy. There is an urgent need for new, whole-body imaging technologies.”
The testing technology consists of feeding macrophages tiny drops of a biologically inert dye that can be detected by magnetic resonance imaging. With the grant funding, the researchers will use the technology — called TAM-Sense — in patients with recurrent head and neck tumors. It will be the first time TAM-Sense will be tested in patients.
According to the scientists, beyond its use for cancer, TAM-Sense could also have clinical applications for other diseases that have substantial inflammatory components, such as autoimmune disorders, cardiovascular diseases and infectious diseases.
“Macrophages are often found at sites of pain in the body, and imaging tools that can pinpoint the anatomical location of these sites will enable more precise pain management,” a statement from the university reads.
