Linking Imaging to Omics
In the past many targeted anti-cancer drugs have been developed and personalized medicine is gaining more and more importance in cancer therapy. At present biopsies in combination with diverse omics techniques (e.g. metabolomics, proteomics, genomics) are the gold standard for tumor characterization and therapy planning. But due to high intratumoral heterogeneity, biopsies bear the risk of gaining an incomplete picture of the tumor and only already known tumors or metastases can be analyzed in limited extend. Imaging in contrast offers the possibility to get information from the whole tumor and from all metastases within the body. But currently there is a gap between imaging phenotypes and the underlying molecular mechanisms. Therefore we are linking imaging to omics techniques to gain a deeper understanding of the imaging data.