Purpose: Test the feasibility of an image-based method to identify taxane resistance in mouse bearing triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) tumor xenografts.
Methods: Xenograft tumor-bearing mice from paclitaxel-sensitive and paclitaxel-resistant TNBC cells (MDA-MD-346) were generated by orthotopic injection into female NOD-SCID mice. When tumors reached 100-150 mm3, mice were scanned using [18F]choline PET/CT. Tumors were collected and sliced for autoradiography and immunofluorescence analysis. Quantitative data was analyzed accordingly.
Results: From fifteen mice scanned, five had taxane-sensitive cell line tumors of which two underwent taxol-based treatment. From the remaining 10 mice with taxane-resistant cell line tumors, four underwent taxol-based treatment. Only 13 mice had the tumor sample analyzed histologically. When normalized to the blood pool, both cell lines showed differences in metabolic uptake before and after treatment.
Conclusions: Treated and untreated taxane-sensitive and taxane-resistant cell lines have different metabolic properties that could be leveraged before the start of chemotherapy.
Keywords: Drug resistance; NOD mice; PET/CT; SCID mice; Triple-negative breast neoplasm.
© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature.