CAR T-cell immunotherapy is a new type of cancer treatment in which a patient's T-cells (a type of immune or white blood cell) are modified in the laboratory so they will bind to the cancer cells and kill them.

One fundamental challenge in the successful development and clinical application of CAR T-cell based therapies, is the need to better understand their behaviour and location once they are injected into patients. Integrated imaging studies are essential to visualise the CAR T-cells in patients at the earliest stage of preclinical and clinical development of cell based treatments.

Utilising a non-invasive visualisation method, PET imaging, the study will develop indirect cell tracking probes to monitor the CAR T-cell immunotherapy. The project will provide important information about whether the therapeutic cells are safe to use, how they kill the cancer cells, and how effective the CAR T-cell based treatments are.

The study is being co-led by researchers from the School of Biomedical Engineering and imaging Sciences Dr Ran Yan, Dr John Maher and Dr James Arnold, and Prof. Erik Arstad, from the Centre for Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry, University College London.