Radiotherapeutic use of 2-deoxy-2-[¹⁸F]fluoro-D-glucose – a comment

Excerpt

The excellent paper of Moadel and colleagues [1] gives further support to the findings reported earlier by Meyer and colleagues [2] suggesting that ¹⁸F-FDG may be of benefit in treating hyper-metabolic neoplasms. For small breast tumors in five mice injected with ¹⁸F-FDG (2–4 mCi, i.p.), Moadel and colleagues noted that 4% of tumor cells stained for an apoptotic marker 10 days afterward versus less than 1% of controls. For larger tumors in three older mice injected intra-peritoneally with 2 mCi of ¹⁸F-FDG, necrosis was found to comprise about 14% of the total tumor volume 10 days after the injection. However, as shown in the first known autoradiographic study of deoxyglucose uptake in breast cancer [3] (see Fig. 1), central necrotic areas could be identified which did not accumulate tracer and comprised approximately 12.5% of the estimated total tumor volume. As suggested by the detail seen in figure one, autoradiography of tracer doses of ¹⁸F-FDG in tissue sections would be an excellent way to test a response to radiotherapeutic doses of this tumor avid radiopharmaceutical, with the ability to simultaneously perform histochemical staining of apoptosis markers.

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