The standard treatment for locally advanced rectal cancer is neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy combined with surgery, but patients after the same treatment regimen show a large difference in outcomes. For patients with good response to neoadjuvant therapy, the waiting & observation scheme can be selected to avoid surgery and other complications. Therefore, accurate assessment of the response of patients with locally advanced rectal cancer after neoadjuvant therapy can better develop personalized treatment strategies. Current studies have found that blood sample detection, endoscopy, imaging examination and artificial intelligence have their own advantages and disadvantages in evaluating the response of neoadjuvant therapy. Therefore, this article reviews the application of different clinical tools in evaluating and predicting the response of neoadjuvant therapy for locally advanced rectal cancer, and looks forward to the future development direction.
Radionuclides can be labeled on biomolecules with specific binding ability. By binding with specific targets of tumors, particles such as α or β emitted by the radionuclides will specifically irradiate tumors and produce ionizing radiation effects, resulting in cell senescence and death within the irradiation range, achieving tumor treatment results, and this way has little impact on surrounding normal tissues. Lutetium-177 (177Lu) can emit γ rays for CT imaging, and can also emit β rays for tumor treatment, so 177Lu is now one of the radionuclides that can be used for integrated diagnosis and treatment. This review summarizes the clinical application of 177Lu in several solid tumors, in conjunction with currently published research.
In the process of solid tumor transformation, the expression of claudins is often dysregulated. Claudins are involved in almost all aspects of tumor biology and steps of tumor development, suggesting that they have the potential to be diagnostics, and prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets. Current studies have found that Claudin18.2 is overexpressed in gastric cancer, pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and other diseases. Targeted anti-tumor therapy based on Claudin 18.2 has become a research hotspot recently. Therefore, this article reviews the basic structural characteristics of Claudin18.2, its expression in various malignant solid tumors, the progress of research and application, and prospect.
FLASH radiotherapy is a hotspot in the domain of tumor radiotherapy in recent years, which delivers at ultra-high dose rate (usually > 100 Gy/s) in an ultra-short time (1?50 ms) to the target volume. The FLASH effect will be generated after the organism is treated with FLASH radiotherapy, which makes the tumor more easy to be killed and the normal tissue is protected after radiotherapy. Because of the differences in sensitivity to FLASH radiotherapy between tumor tissues and normal tissues, FLASH radiotherapy has a subversive advantage in the treatment of tumors. In this paper, several studies since 1959 on the effects of ultra-high dose rate rays and FLASH radiation on cells and organisms are summarized. As the predecessor of FLASH radiotherapy, ultra-high dose rate radiotherapy has laid a very important foundation for the development of FLASH radiotherapy.
