Professor of Surgery University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The aim of surgical oncology is to remove all tumor from the surgical field. Near-infrared intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) provides a means of visualizing tumors and their margins during surgery. This abstract describes the use of a novel, choline kinase based near-infrared fluorophore for IMI of canine lung tumors. Canine primary lung tumors provide a spontaneous large animal model of non-small cell lung cancer in humans. Choline kinase is the first enzyme in the Kennedy pathway for the synthesis of phosphotidylcholine and is over-expressed in many tumors.