# Early prediction of colorectal liver metastases treatment response with ultrasound microvessel imaging

> **NIH NIH R00** · UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN · 2020 · $185,730

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract
 Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Metastasized
colorectal cancer (mCRC), primarily in liver, is the predominate factor for the mortality of CRC patients.
Treatment of CRC liver metastases is essential to the survival of mCRC patients. Currently, anti-angiogenesis
therapy plays a significant role in the treatment of CRC liver metastases. Early and accurate prediction of
response to anti-angiogenesis therapy is of vital clinical significance because: 1) early identification of
nonresponders can expedite the adjustment of treatment regimens to avoid disease progression and spare
patients from unnecessary toxicity and medical expense of ineffective therapies; 2) reliable response
assessment can help individualize treatment strategy and optimize dose and time course of therapy to achieve
maximal treatment efficacy; 3) an early and accurate predictive biomarker is also very beneficial to
development of new therapy agents by providing a reliable surrogate endpoint for clinical trials. At present,
however, a reliable treatment response assessment tool for anti-angiogenesis therapy does not exist clinically.
To fill this gap, here we propose to develop a novel ultrasound microvessel imaging technology, VesselQuest,
to early predict anti-angiogenesis therapy response by examining tumor micro-vasculature with quantitative
hemodynamic and morphologic measurements. VesselQuest can accurately measure a wide dynamic range of
microvessel flow speed and offers a spatial super-resolution that cannot be achieved by current clinical
imaging modalities. Similar to other ultrasound techniques, VesselQuest is also noninvasive, safe, and cost
effective. These features of VesselQuest provide excellent potential for clinical assessment of colorectal liver
metastases treatment response to anti-angiogenic therapy. Aims 1 and 2 of this study will be focused on
technical development of VesselQuest, paving the way for the aims 3 and 4 of the study which will be focused
on validating VesselQuest on an animal tumor model and conducting a pilot clinical study on CRC liver
metastases patients to assess treatment response to anti-angiogenesis therapy. Successful completion of this
project will provide a novel and viable technology for early prediction of anti-angiogenic therapy to improve
treatment outcome and survival of CRC liver metastases patients. Technologies developed for this project can
also be used for assessment of emerging novel treatment method such as immunotherapy.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9861223
- **Project number:** 5R00CA214523-04
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA-CHAMPAIGN
- **Principal Investigator:** Pengfei Song
- **Activity code:** R00 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $185,730
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-03-01 → 2022-01-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9861223

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9861223, Early prediction of colorectal liver metastases treatment response with ultrasound microvessel imaging (5R00CA214523-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9861223. Licensed CC0.

---

*[NIH grants dataset](/datasets/nih-grants) · CC0 1.0*