ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the potential therapeutic uses of imaging with fluorescent proteins. Introducing the green fluorescent protein (GFP) gene in malignant tissue enabled fluorescence-guided surgery to resect all tumor nodules labeled with GFP and increases survival of tumor-bearing animals. Pretreatment with cyclophosphamide before cancer-cell injection enhanced intravascular proliferation and extravasation of human HT-1080 GFP-red fluorescent protein (RFP) fibrosarcoma cells along with extravascular colony formation. Bright light surgery (BLS) was compared to FGS in orthotopic mouse models of human pancreatic cancer expressing RFP. Fluorescence-guided ultraviolet C irradiation inhibited the growth of murine melanoma expressing GFP in the ear of RFP mice using a non-invasive ear tumor imaging model developed previously. Fluorescent proteins enable imaging of all aspects of cancer in living animals. Primary patient tumors acquired fluorescent protein-expressing stroma from passage in GFP and RFP transgenic nude mice. Many more applications of fluorescent proteins will be developed in the future.
