Fluorodeoxyglucose-based positron emission tomography imaging to monitor drug responses in hematological tumors.

Positron emission tomography (PET) can be used to monitor the uptake of the labeled glucose analog fluorodeoxyglucose (¹⁸F-FDG), a process that is generally believed to reflect viable tumor cell mass. The use of ¹⁸F-FDG PET can be helpful in documenting over time the reduction in tumor mass volume in response to anticancer drug therapy in vivo. In this protocol, we describe how to monitor the response of murine B-cell lymphomas to an inducer of apoptosis, the anticancer drug vorinostat (a histone deacetylase inhibitor). B-cell lymphoma cells are injected into recipient mice and, on tumor formation, the mice are treated with vorinostat. The tracer ¹⁸F-FDG is then injected into the mice at several time points, and its uptake is monitored using PET. Because the uptake of ¹⁸F-FDG is not a direct measure of apoptosis, an additional direct method proving that apoptotic cells are present should also be performed.