Evidence of 18F-FCH uptake in human T98G glioblastoma cells

Aim: Tumor and chemo/radiotherapy-damaged brain tissues are hardly distinguishable by conventional morphological imaging. F-18-FCH was compared against F-18-FDG in the T98G glioblastoma cell line with regard to their radiopharmaceutical uptake, in order to test its diagnostic power on brain tumor lesions. Materials and Methods: Equimolar amounts of F-18-FCH and F-18-FDG were added to human glioblastoma T98G cells and human dermal fibroblasts for 20, 40, 60, 90 and 120 min of incubation. Radiopharmaceutical uptake was expressed as a percentage of the administered dose. Cold choline was used for binding competition experiments. Results: In T98G cells F-18-FCH was taken-up in higher amounts than F-18-FDG after 60 min. In fibroblasts, uptake was lower than 1% for both radiopharmaceuticals. Cold choline reduced the uptake of FCH to 1% similarly to fibroblasts. Conclusion: Our results prove the efficacy of F-18-FCH as a promising tracer, better than F-18-FDG in establishing the tumor-to-background ratio in brain tumors.