Physiological responses such as chronic
inflammation and angiogenesis could be used as
biomarkers for early detection of
cancer with noninvasive imaging modalities. The present study reports the application of magnetic resonance imaging instrument to image the binding of
ferrioxamine with
hemin that allows visualizing the chronic
inflammation foci of lung tissue of immunocompromised rats xenografted using
small cell lung carcinoma. A low concentration of
ferrioxamine (0.05 ± 0.02 μM·kg-1 of rat weight) deposited on tissue outside the vasculature was found to diffuse across the capillary walls to the interstitial space and
inflammation foci, which provided a clear enhancement of T1-weighted gradient-echo sequence images.
Ferrioxamine imaging allowed the determination of inflammatory sites and their localization in 3D fat-suppressed maximum intensity projections. The smallest dimension of foci that can be clearly determined is about 0.1 mm3. In concomitant to the in vivo imaging, analysis of histological tissue section showed the development of inflammatory sites. This study provides evidence that medical imaging instrument such as MRI scanner allows researchers to correlate images taken with MRI with those using high-resolution microscopy. Moreover,
ferrioxamine is a useful
molecular probe for determining chronic
inflammation particularly at the very early stages of
cancer.