MR Biomarkers of Tyrosine Kinase Inhibition in Mouse Gliomas

Paul A. Schornack¹, Jia-Jean Yiin, Bo Hu, Raghvendra S. Sengar, Ken-Wei Liu, Haizhong Feng, Frank S. Lieberman, Jann N. Sarkaria², Erik Wiener, Hsin-I Ma³, Shi-yuan Cheng

We present a comparison of MR techniques sensitive to T2, T2*, & ADC to measure mouse gliomas & correlate with histology. We compare untreated mice with mice treated with an anti-angiogenic agent, ZD6474 (Zactima, vandetanib), a dual inhibitor of VEGFR2 & EG. ZD6474 significantly inhibited growth & angiogenesis of gliomas expressing EGFRvIII by specifically blocking signaling transducers in brain, which suggests a potential application in treatments for gliomas that overexpress this factor. Our results indicate that susceptibility/T2* weighted MR along with ADC and T2 measurements can be used as a means of non-invasively quantifying the efficacy of such treatment protocols.