Evaluation of therapeutic effect of tumor-targeted therapy

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Radiology
• Pharmacology

Background:

• Current response evaluation criteria for solid tumors primarily rely on tumor size, which is effective for traditional chemotherapy.
• Tumor-targeted drugs operate via different mechanisms, interfering with specific tumorigenic pathways, rendering size-based criteria insufficient for evaluating their efficacy.

Purpose of the Study:

• To highlight the inadequacy of traditional tumor size-based criteria for assessing targeted therapy response.
• To provide an overview of advanced molecular and functional imaging techniques for evaluating targeted therapies.
• To introduce new computed tomography (CT) criteria and common methods for targeted therapy evaluation.

Main Methods:

• Review of current response evaluation criteria in solid tumors.
• Discussion of the mechanisms of action for tumor-targeted drugs.
• Exploration of molecular and functional imaging techniques including dynamic contrast-enhanced perfusion CT, dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI, dynamic contrast-enhanced ultrasound, and FDG-PET.
• Overview of new CT criteria and established methods for targeted therapy assessment.

Main Results:

• Traditional criteria based solely on tumor size are insufficient for evaluating the response to targeted therapies.
• Molecular and functional imaging techniques directly assess tumor vascularity and cellular metabolism, providing a more accurate evaluation.
• Specific imaging modalities like DCE-perfusion CT, DCE-MRI, DCE-ultrasound, and FDG-PET are increasingly utilized.

Conclusions:

• New imaging-based criteria are necessary for accurately evaluating the effectiveness of targeted cancer therapies.
• Functional and molecular imaging techniques offer direct insights into treatment effects, surpassing limitations of size-based assessments.
• This review summarizes advancements in CT criteria and imaging methods crucial for targeted therapy evaluation.