Abstract 1171: Quantitative evaluation of hepatobiliary transporter density with microscopic fluorescence imaging using indocyanine green

Abstract

Abstract The sodium-dependent taurocholate cotransporter polypeptide (NTCP) has been identified as a predictive marker for post-surgery survival rate of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) patients. Previous studies indicated that the expression of NTCP was associated with tumor differentiation. The ability to quantify protein expression is imperative to ensure successful personalized medicine including treatment stratification and therapeutic monitoring. Current standards for transporter analysis are based on immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence. These measurements are complicated and too time consuming. Here, we endeavored to identify the expression of NTCP by quantitative microscopic fluorescence imaging (MFI) features, that could be used for investigation of tumor heterogeneity. Quantitative image features including the intensity, texture and wavelet texture were extracted from microscopic fluorescence images. Using multiple xenograft tumor models with varying NTCP expression, we determined the NTCP density in each model with MFI using indocyanine green. The MFI-calculated transporter density was correlated with ex vivo immunohistochemistry. Overall, our results argue that MFI provides a promising measure of transporter expression equivalent to immune-staining, with implications for use in investigation of tumor heterogeneity. Citation Format: Hui Meng, Yuan Gao, Lin Yin, Xibo Ma, Kun Wang, Jie Tian. Quantitative evaluation of hepatobiliary transporter density with microscopic fluorescence imaging using indocyanine green [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2018; 2018 Apr 14-18; Chicago, IL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2018;78(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1171.