Companies developing Immuno-therapies need to incorporate innovative imaging methodologies early in their product development.

The above-referenced news article in Physics World, (and the original publication in the Journal of Clinical Investigation is an excellent example of the long-overdue trend to develop more useful imaging tracers and contrast agents. In this article by Prof. Sam Gambhir of Stanford University, an innovative PET tracer was developed to follow longitudinal changes in tumor metabolism when the tumor is treated with a cancer vaccine. The PET tracer biomarker is the OX40 (also known as CD134) receptor, which has been shown in the literature to be a highly activated marker of T cells. This publication demonstrates that (1) a PET tracer can be developed that is an imaging biomarker for T cell activation and more important (2) utilizing an AI method, the authors were able to show response to therapy of their PET tracer can be predicted with higher accuracy than with only anatomic or blood-based strategies.