Christian Thomas Farrar1,
Jason S. Buhrman2, Guanshu Liu3, 4, Assaf A.
Gilad3, 4, Michael T. McMahon3, 4,
Giulia Fulci2
1Department
of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School,
Charlestown, MA, United States; 2Department of Neurosurgery,
Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, Charlestown, MA,
United States; 3F. M. Kirby Center for Functional Brain Imaging,
Kennedy Krieger Institute, Baltimore, MD, United States; 4Department
of Radiology, The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD,
United States
One of the major challenges in treating glioblastoma is the poor efficiency of drug delivery. Oncolytic viruses (OVs) that can selectively replicate in tumor cells and target the infiltrating margins of the tumor represent a promising new tool in cancer therapy. However, the lack of a means to detect the OV in a non-invasive fashion limits the evaluation of such treatments. Here we demonstrate the use of a lysine-rich protein reporter for imaging oncolytic viral delivery using chemical exchange saturation transfer (CEST) MRI that may for the first time provide a tool for the in vivo monitoring of oncolytic virotherapy.