Imaging may be the most rapidly advancing technology in oncology today. Far beyond the traditional uses to screen, stage disease, and follow patients for recurrence or progression, we now have the ability to image across various levels of biological organization, not just organs or tumors, but also molecules, single cells, and tissues. Such information - obtained in real time and noninvasively - can provide important details about whether patients may be candidates for certain therapies or provide a rapid assessment of whether they are responding to treatment.

This special issue of the NCI Cancer Bulletin provides a window into just some of the exciting work being done in the field of cancer imaging, from individual research projects to NCI's support of companies developing new imaging technologies through our Small Business Innovation Research Program or through collaborations with private-sector partners as part of NCI's recently launched Advanced Technology Partnerships Initiative.   Read more  

When NCI's new Molecular Imaging Clinic opens in January 2009, it will be one of the few places in the world where state-of-the-art imaging tools are dedicated to understanding how drugs behave in people with cancer. What is learned there could help investigators determine how best to use existing drugs and determine the properties of new molecularly targeted drugs that are just entering the clinic.

"Our goal is to use advanced imaging technologies to accelerate the development of therapies for cancer," said Dr. Peter Choyke, who directs the Molecular Imaging Program in NCI's Center for Cancer Research (CCR). He has assembled a multidisciplinary team that includes imaging scientists, chemists, physicists, engineers, oncologists, and molecular biologists. They have many collaborators inside and outside NCI.   Read more  

The NCI Cancer Bulletin is produced by the National Cancer Institute (NCI). NCI, which was established in 1937, leads the national effort to eliminate the suffering and death due to cancer. Through basic, clinical, and population-based biomedical research and training, NCI conducts and supports research that will lead to a future in which we can identify the environmental and genetic causes of cancer, prevent cancer before it starts, identify cancers that do develop at the earliest stage, eliminate cancers through innovative treatment interventions, and biologically control those cancers that we cannot eliminate so they become manageable, chronic diseases. For more information on cancer, call 1-800-4-CANCER or visit http://www.cancer.gov. NCI Cancer Bulletin staff can be reached at ncicancerbulletin@mail.nih.gov.