Background: Non-invasive imaging of the biodistribution of novel therapeutics including gene therapy vectors in\r\nanimal models is essential.\r\nMethods: This study assessed the utility of high-frequency ultrasound (HF-US) combined with biofluoresence\r\nimaging (BFI) to determine the longitudinal impact of a Herpesvirus saimiri amplicon on human colorectal cancer\r\nxenograft growth.\r\nResults: HF-US imaging of xenografts resulted in an accurate and informative xenograft volume in a longitudinal\r\nstudy. The volumes correlated better with final ex vivo volume than mechanical callipers (R2 = 0.7993, p = 0.0002 vs.\r\nR2 = 0.7867, p = 0.0014). HF-US showed that the amplicon caused lobe formation. BFI demonstrated retention and\r\nexpression of the amplicon in the xenografts and quantitation of the fluorescence levels also correlated with\r\ntumour volumes.\r\nConclusions: The use of multi-modal imaging provided useful and enhanced insights into the behaviour of gene\r\ntherapy vectors in vivo in real-time. These relatively inexpensive technologies are easy to incorporate into\r\npre-clinical studies.
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