ABSTRACT
A promising role of cellular therapies in cancer treatment, especially minimal residual disease and micrometastases, is reflected by the constantly growing number of clinical trials with adoptively transferred cells. Imaging techniques that involve ex vivo labeling of lymphocytes or other adoptively transferred cells have several limitations. Stable genetic labeling of adoptively transferred cells with various reporter genes has been used to circumvent the temporal limitations of ex vivo radiolabeling or magnetic labeling. Systemic administration of antigen-specific T-lymphocytes is one of the most studied and clinically applicable methods of adoptive anticancer cell therapy. Bone marrow transplantation is one of the most radical and effective approaches in cancer treatment, not only in hematological malignancies, but also in solid tumor. Direct and indirect cell labeling for nuclear imaging of transferred cells have been proven a reliable method for imaging adoptive cellular therapies. The genetic nature of this method permits in vivo labeling of the progeny of injected cells.
