PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Mark A. Sellmyer
AU  - Iris K. Lee
AU  - David A. Mankoff
TI  - Building the Bridge: Molecular Imaging Biomarkers for 21st Century Cancer Therapies
AID  - 10.2967/jnumed.121.262484
DP  - 2021 Dec 01
TA  - Journal of Nuclear Medicine
PG  - 1672--1676
VI  - 62
IP  - 12
4099  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/62/12/1672.short
4100  - http://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/62/12/1672.full
SO  - J Nucl Med2021 Dec 01; 62
AB  - Precision medicine, in which the molecular underpinnings of the disease are assessed for tailored therapies, has greatly impacted cancer care. In parallel, a new pillar of therapeutics has emerged with profound success, including immunotherapies such as checkpoint inhibitors and cell-based therapies. Nonetheless, it remains essential to develop paradigms to predict and monitor for therapeutic response. Molecular imaging has the potential to add substantially to all phases of cancer patient care: predictive, companion diagnostics can illuminate therapeutic target density within a tumor, and pharmacodynamic imaging biomarkers can complement traditional modalities to judge a favorable treatment response. This “Focus on Molecular Imaging” article discusses the current role of molecular imaging in oncology and highlights an additional step in the clinical paradigm termed a therapeutic biomarker, which serves to assess whether next-generation drugs reach their target to elicit a favorable clinical response.