New marker substance for cancer cells

Scientists from ETH Zurich have developed a new substance that enables certain tumour types to be rendered visible in high resolution using positron emission tomography. The so-called tracer has successfully been tested in mice. Now the researchers are planning clinical trials in humans.

Imaging techniques in cancer medicine provide far more than merely information on the scale and location of cancerous ulcers. There are modern methods that additionally characterise the tumour cells precisely, for instance by specific molecules they carry on their surface. Such additional information gives doctors key clues as to the precise cancer type and enables them to predict the probability that a patient will respond to a particular form of therapy.

Positron emission tomography (PET) is one such technique. Unlike with computed tomography or magnetic resonance imaging, PET does not render the body tissue visible, but rather radioactively marked molecules - known as tracers - inside the body, which are injected into the patient’s bloodstream prior to the scan. Based on the lock-and-key principle, they adhere to certain molecules on the cell surface. Through the radioactive radiation, specifically cell tissue with these surface molecules is visible on the PET scan.

Researchers from ETH Zurich, the Paul Scherrer Institute and company Merck Millipore have now developed a new tracer for PET that binds to the folic acid receptor. This receptor is interesting because it accumulates on the cell surface in many cancer types. The PET scan provides information on the size and location of the tumour and the density of the folic acid receptors on the cell surface.

World’s first clinical trial

The team of researchers headed by Simon Ametamey and Roger Schibli, both professors at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich, have successfully tested their new substance in mice with cervical tumours. In a next step, the scientists now want to study whether the substance proves equally successful in humans. A pilot study on patients with ovarian, lung and intestinal cancer in several Swiss hospitals, including University Hospital Zurich, is in preparation. It will be the first clinical trial on a folic acid receptor marker for PET on patients.

If the substance proves suitable, the scientists would like to use it to predict the efficacy of chemotherapy in the future. They primarily have a new generation of cancer medication in mind that also binds to the folic acid receptor, which then channels the drug into the cancer cells, where it unfolds its therapeutic effect.
Personalised medicine

“Our PET tracer provides important additional information for this targeted therapeutic approach with cytotoxic substances,” says Ametamey. After all, one difficulty with the new form of therapy is that not in all patients the cancer cells carry the folic acid receptor. In the case of ovarian, cervical and brain tumours, it is nine out of ten patients, with lung cancer around three quarters and with breast cancer about half. In patients without the receptor, the novel chemotherapy is ineffective.