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Purpose
Gadolinium diethylene-triamine penta-acetic acid (Gd-DTPA)-based dynamic contrast-enhanced magnetic resonance imaging (DCE-MRI) has been suggested as a useful noninvasive method for characterizing the physiologic microenvironment of tumors. In the present study, we investigated whether Gd-DTPA-based DCE-MRI has the potential to provide biomarkers for hypoxia-associated metastatic dissemination.
Methods and Materials
C-10 and D-12 melanoma xenografts were used as experimental tumor models. Pimonidazole was used as a hypoxia marker. A total of 60 tumors were imaged, and parametric images of Ktrans (volume transfer constant of Gd-DTPA) and ve (fractional distribution volume of Gd-DTPA) were produced by pharmacokinetic analysis of the DCE-MRI series. The host mice were killed immediately after DCE-MRI, and the primary tumor and the lungs were resected and prepared for histologic assessment of the fraction of pimonidazole-positive hypoxic tissue and the presence of lung metastases, respectively.
Results
Metastases were found in 11 of 26 mice with C-10 tumors and 14 of 34 mice with D-12 tumors. The primary tumors of the metastatic-positive mice had a greater fraction of hypoxic tissue (p = 0.00031, C-10; p < 0.00001, D-12), a lower median Ktrans (p = 0.0011, C-10; p?<?0.00001, D-12), and a lower median ve (p = 0.014, C-10; p = 0.016, D-12) than the primary tumors of the metastatic-negative mice.
Conclusions
These findings support the clinical attempts to establish DCE-MRI as a method for providing biomarkers for tumor aggressiveness and suggests that primary tumors characterized by low Ktrans and low ve values could have a high probability of hypoxia-associated metastatic spread.