Weissleder Ralph
Center for Molecular Imaging Research, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA 02129, USA.
Science. 2006 May 26;312(5777):1168-71. doi: 10.1126/science.1125949.
Medical imaging technologies have undergone explosive growth over the past few decades and now play a central role in clinical oncology. But the truly transformative power of imaging in the clinical management of cancer patients lies ahead. Today, imaging is at a crossroads, with molecularly targeted imaging agents expected to broadly expand the capabilities of conventional anatomical imaging methods. Molecular imaging will allow clinicians to not only see where a tumor is located in the body, but also to visualize the expression and activity of specific molecules (e.g., proteases and protein kinases) and biological processes (e.g., apoptosis, angiogenesis, and metastasis) that influence tumor behavior and/or response to therapy. This information is expected to have a major impact on cancer detection, individualized treatment, and drug development, as well as our understanding of how cancer arises.
在过去几十年中，医学成像技术经历了爆炸式增长，如今在临床肿瘤学中发挥着核心作用。但成像技术在癌症患者临床管理中的真正变革力量仍在未来。如今，成像技术正处于十字路口，分子靶向成像剂有望大幅扩展传统解剖成像方法的能力。分子成像将使临床医生不仅能够看到肿瘤在体内的位置，还能可视化影响肿瘤行为和/或对治疗反应的特定分子（如蛋白酶和蛋白激酶）的表达和活性以及生物过程（如细胞凋亡、血管生成和转移）。预计这些信息将对癌症检测、个体化治疗和药物开发以及我们对癌症发生机制的理解产生重大影响。
