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Home News UT Researchers Demonstrate Response to Chemotherapy for Lung Cancer can be Predicted

UT Researchers Demonstrate Response to Chemotherapy for Lung Cancer can be Predicted

Published: Saturday, June 2, 2007

Researchers at the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine have identified a way to predict how well patients fighting certain lung cancers are responding to chemotherapy within a few weeks of the patients starting their treatment.

By using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to measure metabolic activity, the scientists learned that patients who respond well to chemotherapy are those whose non-small cell lung cancer becomes less active as early as three weeks into the course of their treatment as evidenced by prolonged overall survival.

“Because the number of patients in our study was small, we must be cautious with our interpretation, but these results are very exciting,” explained Claude Nahmias, Ph.D., professor of radiology and medicine at the UT Graduate School of Medicine, and co-author of the research appearing in the May 2007 issue of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine. “This discovery can guide physicians in determining whether to continue chemotherapy with its associated toxic side effects or if it would be more beneficial for the patient to move on to a different approach treatment, thereby offering patients better care and greatly enhancing their quality of life as well.”

Nahmias and his fellow researchers evaluated 15 patients weekly for seven weeks as each patient started their chemotherapy regimes and discovered that PET studies done in the first and third weeks can predict success or failure of the therapy.

PET is a powerful molecular imaging procedure that noninvasively demonstrates the function of organs and other tissues. When PET is used to image cancer, glucose (sugar) labeled with a radioactive tracer is injected into the patient. This radiopharmaceutical will accumulate in tissues, including tumors, in proportion to the tissues’ metabolic activity and this distribution can then be displayed as three-dimensional images, giving physicians an unparalleled view of the affect of chemotherapy in cancer.

Non–small cell lung cancer is the most common type of lung cancer, usually growing and spreading more slowly than small cell lung cancer. Lung cancer is the second most common cancer and the most common cause of cancer-related death in both men and women in the United States. In 2007, about 213,380 new cases of lung cancer are expected in the United States, and about 160,390 people will die of the disease.

Co-investigators with Nahmias include the University of Tennessee’s Wahid T. Hanna, M.D., Misty J. Long, R.T. (R)(N), Karl F. Hubner, M.D., and David W. Townsend, Ph.D., as well as Lindi M. Wahl, Ph.D., of the University of Western Ontario.

The University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine in Knoxville is part of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, the statewide academic health system. The school is home to more than 200 teaching physicians and researchers and more than 175 medical and dental resident physicians in 12 residency and nine fellowship programs. The school, together with clinical partner, University Health System Inc., forms the University of Tennessee Medical Center, the only academic medical center in the area.

For more information, visit the UT Graduate School of Medicine.