Imperial Science Café: Role of PET scan research in cancer treatment

Описание: Dr Preetha Aravind is a NCITA Clinical Research Fellow at Imperial College, London and a Clinician, Speciality trainee in Medical Oncology. She is doing her 2nd year PhD on novel PET imaging radiotracers in cancer treatment.

Preetha will share her research on the concept of PET scanning in the context of cancer treatment. She will discuss about imaging radiotracers that provide new insight into the tumour structure or function. The talk is to help understand the working of PET scans and its implications in the field of research and to get a better view on the thoughts from the public. The reason this is so important is because right now cancer imaging is limited to CT and FDG PET to estimate the tumour response and help guide treatment. But unfortunately, can have limitations. Imaging helps to detect, characterise tumours and provide valuable information on early response to cancer treatment, thereby improving effectiveness of therapy. Using newer radiotracers that target specific pathways in cancer development, Preetha explains the significance of these tracers in cancer research to detect cancer in a more sensitive way, as well as stratify patients more effectively to therapy, particularly in the context of drug development, that will make a significant impact on patient care. By exploring the very rapid changes in molecular targets and pathways associated with anti-cancer treatment, that is evident within days means that we can in the future detect response to therapy much earlier than current clinical standards of radiological shrinkage and deliver personalised medicine to patients.