In vivo preclinical low-field MRI monitoring of tumor growth following a suicide-gene therapy in an orthotopic mice model of human glioblastoma.

Abstract Purpose The aim of this study was to monitor in vivo with low field MRI growth of a murine orthotopic glioma model following a suicide gene therapy. Methods The gene therapy consisted in the stereotactic injection in the mice brain of a modified vaccinia virus Ankara (MVA) vector encoding for a suicide gene (FCU1) that transforms a non toxic prodrug 5-fluorocytosine (5-FC) to its highly cytotoxic derivatives 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and 5’-fluorouridine-5’monophosphate (5’-FUMP). Using a warmed-up imaging cell, sequential 3D T1 and T2 0.1T MRI brain examinations were performed on 16 Swiss female nu/nu mice bearing orthotopic human glioblastoma (U87-MG cells). The 6-week in vivo MRI follow-up consisted in a weekly measurement of the intracerebral tumor volume leading to a total of 65 examinations. Mice were divided in four groups: sham group ( n  = 4), sham group treated with 5-FC only ( n  = 4), sham group with injection of MVA-FCU1 vector only ( n  = 4), therapy group administered with MVA-FCU1 vector and 5-FC ( n  = 4). Measurements of tumor volumes were obtained after manual segmentation of T1- and T2-weighted images. Results Intra-observer and inter-observer tumor volume measurements show no significant differences. No differences were found between T1 and T2 volume tumor doubling times between the three sham groups. A significant statistical difference ( p Conclusion Preclinical low field MRI was able to monitor efficacy of suicide gene therapy in delaying the tumor growth in an in vivo mouse model of orthotopic glioblastoma.