New imaging approaches for understanding lung cancer response to treatment.

The survival rate for lung cancer patients has barely improved over the past 30 years. New evaluation benchmarks for cancer response are needed to test therapy agents in a cost-effective and timely manner. From recent work, it is evident that primary lung cancers are very complex structures containing not only cancerous cells but also fibrotic and inflammatory cells and necrotic tissue. A greater understanding of the three-dimensional structure of primary lung cancer is emerging, allowing for the first time an appreciation of how this biomass is represented in medical imaging data. It is only through a greater understanding of the lung cancer biomass that we can define rational and early-response measures, including specific cellular responses such as cancer cell death or growth inhibition. In doing so, we can define response metrics that will shorten new drug discovery times and reduce costs, allowing for the evaluation of many more agents with therapeutic potential.