Abstract
The enormous advances in our understanding of the progression of diseases at the molecular level have been supplemented by the new field of ‘molecular imaging’, which provides for in vivo visualization of molecular events at the cellular level in living organisms. Molecular imaging is a noninvasive assessment of gene and protein function, protein–protein interaction and/or signal transduction pathways in animal models of human disease and in patients to provide insights into molecular pathogenesis. Five major imaging techniques are currently available to assess the structural and functional alterations in vivo in small animals. These are (i) optical bioluminescence and fluorescence imaging techniques, (ii) radionuclide-based positron emission tomography (PET) and single photon emitted computed tomography (SPECT), (iii) X-ray-based computed tomography (CT), (iv) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and (v) ultrasound imaging (US). Functional molecular imaging requires an imaging probe that is specific for a given molecular event. In preclinical imaging, involving small animal models, the imaging probe could be an element of a direct (‘direct imaging’) or an indirect (‘indirect imaging’) event. Reporter genes are essential for indirect imaging and provide a general integrated platform for many different applications. Applications of multimodality imaging using combinations of bioluminescent, fluorescent and PET reporter genes in unified fusion vectors developed by us for recording events from single live cells to whole animals with high sensitivity and accurate quantification are discussed. Such approaches have immense potential to track progression of metastasis, immune cell trafficking, stem cell therapy, transgenic animals and even molecular interactions in living subjects.
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Acknowledgements
The author wishes to express her sincere gratitude to Prof Sanjiv Sam Gambhir, the entire Gambhir lab and collaborators at Stanford for their help in pursuing her exciting research in molecular imaging. The current support from ACTREC is also acknowledged.
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[Ray P 2011 Multimodality molecular imaging of disease progression in living subjects. J. Biosci. 36 499–504] DOI 10.1007/s12038-011-9079-0
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Ray, P. Multimodality molecular imaging of disease progression in living subjects. J Biosci 36, 499–504 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-011-9079-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12038-011-9079-0