Specialised MRI scans assess value of anti-cancer <br>chemotherapy long before tumours shown to shrink

BALTIMORE, Maryland – Studies on some 55 U.S. men and women with potentially deadly liver or pancreatic cancers show that specialized MRI scans can tell within a month whether highly toxic chemotherapy is working and killing tumour cells long before tumours actually shrink – or fail to shrink. 
Using special software and MRI scanners, imaging experts at Johns Hopkins Medicine developed their new assay, known as a volumetric functional MRI scan, by exploiting the physiological differences in water movement and absorption inside cancer cells that are dying and those that are not.
The studies are believed to be the first to show that the diagnostic imaging procedure buys patients many months to well over a year of life, by figuring out who might benefit from repeat or higher-dose chemotherapy.
The paired scans, which take only minutes to perform, can detect the movement of water molecules inside tumour cells; and software performs the mathematical analysis needed to calculate the imaged tumour cells’ so-called apparent diffusion coefficient. Living tumour cells showing a low coefficient, as water absorption in and out of the cells is tightly controlled, and dying cells – the goal of chemotherapy – have a relatively high coefficient, because the tumour cells’ membranes have lost the ability to restrict water movement. The software used in the scans was developed at Johns Hopkins and at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics, which manufactures the scanners.
“Our latest volumetric functional MRI scans could help people with aggressive cancers, and little time to spare on failed treatments, know as quickly as possible if their treatment is working and when they need to consider other treatment options. And without having to wait for months to actually see tumour shrinkage,” says study senior investigator and radiologist Ihab Kamel, M.D., Ph.D.
Results from the first of two studies to be published in the same July 1 issue of the journal Radiology show that the high-precision, 3-D images, taken shortly before and one month after a form of chemotherapy called transcatheter arterial chemoembolization, could assess the treatment’s impact against a rare and advanced form of liver bile duct cancer, known as cholangiocarcinoma. The study involved 29 men and women aged 29 to 82, all undergoing treatment at The Johns Hopkins Hospital. 
Among the key findings in the first study was that 22 people, whose functional MRI scans showed increases in apparent diffusion coefficient scores of over 45%, lived at least 10 months longer, while some 17 with coefficient score increases over 60%, lived at least 17 months longer.
Dr Kamel, an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and its Russell H. Morgan Department of Radiology, says that cholangiocarcinoma is often diagnosed at such an advanced stage that patients only have on average six months to live. “By the time our patients become jaundiced, start turning yellow from bile build-up and seek medical help, it’s almost too late,” he says. “They have no time to waste on failed treatments.”
The second study, also at Johns Hopkins, tested the scans on 26 men and women, ages 37 to 79, with islet cell carcinoma, a well-known pancreatic cancer. Researchers analysed some 215 tumorous lesions in these people, scanning shortly before and one month after the same initial treatment for their cancer. 
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