Huang Wenhui, Li Nemin, Zhu Sheng, Zhang Yuze, Song Xinyang, Zhang Bin, Yan Hao, Tian Jie, Wang Kun, Zhang Shuixing
State Key Laboratory of Bioactive Molecules and Druggability Assessment, the First Affiliated Hospital, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China.
Guangdong Basic Research Center of Excellence for Natural Bioactive Molecules and Discovery of Innovative Drugs, College of Medicine, Jinan University, Guangzhou, 510632, China.
Theranostics. 2025 Jul 11;15(16):8012-8030. doi: 10.7150/thno.112781. eCollection 2025.
Hypoxia can substantially impact clinical outcomes in patients with head and neck cancer (HNC) by promoting tumor invasion, metastasis, immune escape, and therapy resistance. Given the growing interest in targeting hypoxia for cancer therapy, noninvasive methods are needed to accurately detect hypoxia and evaluate the tumor response to treatment. This review summarizes recent advances in hypoxia-targeted probes and imaging techniques, emphasizing their imaging mechanisms, strengths, and limitations. We focused on the promising clinical applications of hypoxia imaging, especially those currently used in clinics, such as positron emission tomography and magnetic resonance imaging, and highlighted their roles in guiding personalized therapy. Future directions include optimizing imaging probes to improve safety profiles, integrating multimodal imaging, applying machine learning models to analyze multiparametric data, and establishing standardized 3-dimensional models to better mimic hypoxia heterogeneity. These advancements are expected to considerably improve the management of patients with HNC.
缺氧可通过促进肿瘤侵袭、转移、免疫逃逸和治疗抵抗，对头颈癌（HNC）患者的临床结局产生重大影响。鉴于针对缺氧进行癌症治疗的兴趣日益浓厚，需要非侵入性方法来准确检测缺氧并评估肿瘤对治疗的反应。本综述总结了缺氧靶向探针和成像技术的最新进展，重点介绍了它们的成像机制、优势和局限性。我们关注缺氧成像有前景的临床应用，尤其是目前临床中使用的那些，如正电子发射断层扫描和磁共振成像，并强调了它们在指导个性化治疗中的作用。未来的方向包括优化成像探针以改善安全性，整合多模态成像，应用机器学习模型分析多参数数据，以及建立标准化的三维模型以更好地模拟缺氧异质性。这些进展有望显著改善头颈癌患者的管理。
