In Vivo Quantification of Tumor Receptor Binding Potential with Dual-Reporter Molecular Imaging

Purpose Receptor availability represents a key component of current cancer management. However, no approaches have been adopted to do this clinically, and the current standard of care is invasive tissue biopsy. A dual-reporter methodology capable of quantifying available receptor binding potential of tumors in vivo within a clinically relevant time scale is presented. Procedures To test the methodology, a fluorescence imaging-based adaptation was validated against ex vivo and in vitro measures of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) binding potential in four tumor lines in mice, each line expected to express a different level of EGFR. Results A strong correlation was observed between in vivo and ex vivo measures of binding potential for all tumor lines ( r = 0.99, p