Abstract 1869: Improved image-guided surgical resection of glioblastoma with [18F]-fluoroethyltyrosine Cerenkov luminescence imaging

Abstract

Abstract The ability of a surgeon to completely resect a tumor is directly related to outcome in high- and low-grade gliomas. However current intraoperative navigational tools are useful only in a subset of glioma patients and do not detect the full extent of disease. We modelled orthotopic brain tumors by stereotactically implanting human U87, rat F98 and C6 glioblastoma cells into the forebrains of rats. We show here that a new hybrid PET-Cerenkov luminescence imaging approach using O-(2-[18F]fluoroethyl)-L-tyrosine (FET) can accurately delineate tumor margins pre- and intra-operatively. We demonstrate consistency in the successful localisation and quantification of tumor burden using PET and Cerenkov luminescence imaging. The Cerenkov signal in individual tumors was directly proportional to the signal detected in corresponding FET PET scans (y = 1.06x - 0.01; R2 = 0.98; p < 0.0001) and subsequent autoradiography indicated equivalence between modalities. Cerenkov luminescence was better able to discriminate tumor from healthy brain tissue than the current ‘gold standard’ for intraoperative mapping, 5-ALA (5-aminolevulinic acid), indicated by a greater area under the ROC curve in human xenograft (0.968 ± 0.003 vs. 0.893 ± 0.019; p = 0.003) and syngeneic rat glioma models (0.970 ± 0.010 vs. 0.774 ± 0.046; p = 0.006). The quantitative accuracy of Cerenkov luminescence enabled us to determine a threshold of 2.1 x 102 p-1 sec-1 cm-2 sr-1 MBq-1 that separated U87 human glioblastoma and normal brain tissue, more precisely guiding tumor excision than 5-ALA. At the optimal threshold the specificity for detecting syngeneic rat and human xenograft gliomas was better with FET Cerenkov than 5-ALA (91.1 ± 2.7 % vs. 67.2 ± 5.2 %; p = 0.007 and 91.2 ± 1.0 % vs. 82.9 ± 1.8 %; p = 0.005 respectively). We confirmed and extended these findings at higher spatial resolution on cryosections using FET autoradiography and 5-ALA confocal microscopy, with FET demonstrating higher specificity and sensitivity for tumor detection than 5-ALA. FET PET-Cerenkov luminescence imaging has the potential for guiding resections in a much broader range of glioma patients than current approaches. Previous clinical experience with FET offers a facile route for clinical translation of this technology. Citation Format: David Y. Lewis, Richard Mair, Alan J. Wright, Kieren Allinson, Scott K. Lyons, Tom Booth, Robert Bielik, Dmitry Soloviev, Kevin M. Brindle. Improved image-guided surgical resection of glioblastoma with [18F]-fluoroethyltyrosine Cerenkov luminescence imaging [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2017; 2017 Apr 1-5; Washington, DC. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2017;77(13 Suppl):Abstract nr 1869. doi:10.1158/1538-7445.AM2017-1869