New PET agent offers ‘exceptional’ imaging of kidney cancer

A new positron emission computed tomography (PET) agent achieves “exceptional” imaging quality of lesions in patients with kidney cancer, according to new work published in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

The agent 68Ga-DPI-4452, or Debio 0328, was found to be better than standard CT imaging for patients with clear cell renal cell cancer (ccRCC), which accounts for the majority of renal cell cancers.

Up to one-third of patients with ccRCC develop metastases, resulting in poor prognosis. Although ablative surgery is effective, it can be difficult to identify the extent of disease spread. Better visualization of metastases has the potential to improve surgical planning.

Debio 0328 targets the carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX) encoding gene, which is overexpressed in a vast majority of ccRCC cases, and could offer an opportunity for providers to concoct more focused treatments. That, in addition to assessing the safety and tolerability of Debio 0328, was the focus of this latest study, Professor Michael Hofman MBBS, a nuclear medicine specialist at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Center in Melbourne, Australia, explained.