Mingyu Zhang¹ , Hailong Xu¹ , Hao Jiang¹ , Huijie Jiang²

1 Department of radiology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, Harbin, 150086, China
2 Department of radiology, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Harbin Medical University, No. 246, Xuefu Road, Nangang District, Harbin, 150086, China
Author    Correspondence author
Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics, 2017, Vol. 5, No. 7   doi: 10.5376/cge.2017.05.0007
Received: 11 Dec., 2017    Accepted: 20 Dec., 2017    Published: 29 Dec., 2017

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Zhang M.Y., Xu H.L., Jiang H., and Jiang H.J., 2017, Advances in molecular imaging strategies in immune checkpoint therapy, 5(7): 33-38 (doi: 10.5376/cge.2017.05.0007)

Tumor cells avoid being detected and eliminated by the innate immune system, and as a result, are able to proliferate in the body. Immune checkpoint inhibitor therapies eliminate cancer cells by activating immune cells in the body; however, this treatment is not suitable against all cancer types. This reflects a dire need for the development of non-invasive molecular imaging tools in the visualization of immune checkpoints expression, which will then allow practitioners to improve clinical assessments, screen interest groups and provide therapeutic predictions, furthering the development of personalized medicine. Therefore, the analyzing the efficacy of various tracers and the optimization of antibodies have recently become popular topics of research in the field of antibody-based imaging. This review summarizes the current mechanism of immune checkpoint-based treatments, and preclinical studies on immune checkpoint imaging.

Immune checkpoints; PD-1/PD-L1; Molecular imaging