Funded by Generalitat Valenciana under the PROMETEO program

CIPROM/2021/003

Cancer is a far-reaching problem affecting the health of all human societies and the leading causes of death worldwide. Herein, medical technologies based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), positron emission tomography (PET), ultrasound (US) and nanomedicine (NM) are essential for cancer diagnostic, therapy and monitoring. Naturally, there is an increasing interest in combining technologies based on different physical and chemical principles and processes to develop new medical tools for enhanced imaging and treatment. Unfortunately, combining such different technologies in an efficient manner is highly challenging from a technical point of view, as some of them (most notably MRI and PET) impose stringent requirements on the electronics building these systems, the rooms where they are sited and nearby devices. Besides, a critical factor preventing hybrid devices from becoming the main standard in canccoser theranostic is their cost.

Within this PROMETEO project, the main goal is to develop an IMPACT (Inexpensive MRI-PET-Acoustic hybrid system for Cancer Theranostics) preclinical technology and apply its theranostic and monitoring capabilities for in vivo studies on a xenograft rat model with human invasive bladder cancer cells, which we have identified as a suitable first problem. Moreover, this can become a medical imaging and therapy instrumentation platform scalable to larger pre-clinical animals and to the clinical field.

In IMPACT, MRI will play a double role: imaging, where we will exploit the unique capabilities of MRI for anatomical information extraction; and thermometry, where we will develop pulse sequences to detect the temperature-dependent of the resonant frequency in every voxel. The PET system will provide functional information about tumor localization and malignance. The PET and MRI systems will guide the focus of the acoustic system, which can be used for hyperthermia and ablation therapies. Finally, the nanoparticles will be used for targeted drug delivery and image contrast enhancement for functional imaging with PET.