Publication
Title
From mouse to man and back : closing the correlation gap between imaging and histopathology for lung diseases
Author
Abstract
Lung diseases such as fibrosis, asthma, cystic fibrosis, infection and cancer are life-threatening conditions that slowly deteriorate quality of life and for which our diagnostic power is high, but our knowledge on etiology and/or effective treatment options still contains important gaps. In the context of day-to-day practice, clinical and preclinical studies, clinicians and basic researchers team up and continuously strive to increase insights into lung disease progression, diagnostic and treatment options. To unravel disease processes and to test novel therapeutic approaches, investigators typically rely on end-stage procedures such as serum analysis, cyto-/chemokine profiles and selective tissue histology from animal models. These techniques are useful but provide only a snapshot of disease processes that are essentially dynamic in time and space. Technology allowing evaluation of live animals repeatedly is indispensable to gain a better insight into the dynamics of lung disease progression and treatment effects. Computed tomography (CT) is a clinical diagnostic imaging technique that can have enormous benefits in a research context too. Yet, the implementation of imaging techniques in laboratories lags behind. In this review we want to showcase the integrated approaches and novel developments in imaging, lung functional testing and pathological techniques that are used to assess, diagnose, quantify and treat lung disease and that may be employed in research on patients and animals. Imaging approaches result in often novel anatomical and functional biomarkers, resulting in many advantages, such as better insight in disease progression and a reduction in the numbers of animals necessary. We here showcase integrated assessment of lung disease with imaging and histopathological technologies, applied to the example of lung fibrosis. Better integration of clinical and preclinical imaging technologies with pathology will ultimately result in improved clinical translation of (therapy) study results.
Language
English
Source (journal)
Diagnostics
Publication
2020
ISSN
2075-4418
DOI
10.3390/DIAGNOSTICS10090636
Volume/pages
10 :9 (2020) , 25 p.
Article Reference
636
ISI
000581751900001
Pubmed ID
32859103
Medium
E-only publicatie
Full text (Publisher's DOI)
UAntwerpen
Publication type
Subject
External links
Web of Science
Record
Identifier
Creation 08.06.2021
Last edited 03.02.2023
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