Abstract #0036

Measuring Lymph Node Swelling Using MRI to Act as a Biomarker for Tumour Suppression

Kim Brewer¹,², Drew DeBay³, Kerry Lake³, Iulia Dude³,⁴, Genevieve Weir¹, Marc Mansour¹, Chris Bowen,²³

¹Immunovaccine Inc., Halifax, NS, Canada; ²School of Biomedical Engineering, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada; ³Institute for Biodiagnostics (Atlantic), National Research Council of Canada, Halifax, NS, Canada; ⁴Physics, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada

Immunotherapies are aimed at potentiating the bodys immune response. DepoVax^TM is an immunotherapy vaccine that encapsulates the tumor-associated antigens in liposomes, which are then suspended in oil. The oil acts as an adjuvant, which improves the potency of the peptides and aids in eliciting a strong immune response. This work investigated whether an increase in the draining lymph node (LN) volume (right inguinal LN) could be used as a biomarker for successful vaccination (i.e. successful tumor suppression). This was done by performing longitudinal LN volumetry using MRI to evaluate changes using receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves.