A PET Imaging Strategy for Interrogating Target Engagement and Oncogene Status in Pancreatic Cancer

Purpose: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most deadly cancers with a 5-year survival rate of less than 10%. Physicians often rely on biopsy or CT to guide treatment decisions, but these techniques fail to reliably measure the actions of therapeutic agents in PDAC. KRAS mutations are present in >90% of PDAC and are connected to many signaling pathways through its oncogenic cascade, including extracellular regulated kinase (ERK) and MYC. A key downstream event of MYC is transferrin receptor (TfR), which has been identified as a biomarker for cancer therapeutics and imaging. Experimental Design: In this study, we aimed to test if zirconium-89 transferrin ([⁸⁹Zr]Zr-Tf) could measure changes in MYC depending on KRAS status of PDAC, and assess target engagement of anti-MYC and anti-ERK targeted therapies. Results: Mice bearing iKras*p53* tumors showed significantly higher (P< 0.05) uptake of [⁸⁹Zr]Zr-Tf in mice withdrawn from inducible oncogenic KRAS. A therapy study with JQ1 showed a statistically significant decrease (P< 0.05) of [⁸⁹Zr]Zr-Tf uptake in drug vs. vehicle-treated mice bearing Capan-2 and Suit-2 xenografts. IHC analysis of resected PDAC tumors reflects the data observed via PET imaging and radiotracer biodistribution. Conclusions: Our study demonstrates that [⁸⁹Zr]Zr-Tf is a valuable tool to noninvasively assess oncogene status and target engagement of small molecule inhibitors downstream of oncogenic KRAS, allowing a quantitative assessment of drug delivery.

https://ift.tt/2OxUEKA