Impact of Angiogenesis-Related Gene Expression on the Tracer Kinetics of 18F-FDG in Colorectal Tumors

18F-FDG kinetics are primarily dependent on the expression of genes associated with glucose transporters and hexokinases but may be modulated by other genes. The dependency of 18F-FDG kinetics on angiogenesis-related gene expression was evaluated in this study.Methods: Patients with primary colorec-tal tumors (n5 25) were examinedwith PET and 18F-FDGwithin 2 days before surgery. Tissue specimens were obtained from the tumor and the normal colon during surgery, and gene expression was assessed using gene arrays. Results: Overall, 23 angiogen-esis-relatedgeneswere identifiedwith a tumor-to-normal ratio ex-ceeding 1.50. Analysis revealed a significant correlation between k1 and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF-A, r5 0.51) and between fractal dimension and angiopoietin-2 (r 5 0.48). k3 was negatively correlatedwith VEGF-B (r520.46), and a positive cor-relation was noted for angiopoietin-like 4 gene (r5 0.42). A multi