Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Cancer remains a leading cause of global morbidity and mortality, necessitating continuous innovations in diagnosis and therapy. Redox biology, the balance between reactive oxygen species production and antioxidant defenses, plays a central role in tumor initiation, progression, and therapeutic response. Elevated reactive oxygen species levels drive DNA damage, genomic instability, and tumor-promoting signaling, whereas adaptive antioxidant responses promote survival, therapeutic resistance, and recurrence. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy partly exert their cytotoxic effects through reactive oxygen species generation. However, tumors with enhanced redox-buffering capacity often evade reactive oxygen species-mediated killing. Ferroptosis, iron-dependent cell death driven by lipid peroxidation, is a key redox-linked pathway that synergizes with radiotherapy, offering new radiosensitization strategies. Redox imaging is a non-invasive approach to map oxidative and reductive dynamics in tumors. This review outlines the unique strengths of advancements, including optical imaging with redox-sensitive probes, positron emission tomography tracers targeting glutamine metabolism or system Xc-, magnetic resonance imaging with nitroxide-based probes and dynamic nuclear polarization, and electron paramagnetic resonance imaging. Together, these developments underscore the potential of redox imaging as a research and clinical tool. By enabling functional tumor characterization, patient stratification, and treatment monitoring, redox-based imaging provides a framework for precision oncology and development of redox-modulating therapies.
DOI: 10.3164/jcbn.25-211
Authors: Hironobu Yasui, Kazuhiro Kato, Tomoki Bo, Osamu Inanami
Institutions: Hokkaido University, Yamagata University
Language: English
Subfield: Molecular Biology
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
Awards: Development of a novel radiotherapy targeting iron-dependent cell death ferroptosis, G5704219862, Research for local control and high accuracy of cancer senolytic therapy by non-invasive imaging, The dynamic analysis and control of radiation-induced cell death through the intervention of biomolecular metal redox and cancer-specific metabolism.
OpenAlex ID: W7103990287