Human copper transporter agent effective for both melanoma PET imaging and therapy

A novel theranostic agent has the ability to target melanoma and provide radionuclide therapy in preliminary investigation, according to a study published March 13 in the Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

Human copper transporter 1 (CTR1) is generally overexpressed in the case of several forms of cancer, making it an ideal biomarker. For this study, researchers including Chunxia Qin at the Molecular Imaging Program at Stanford (MIPS), Canary Center at Stanford for Cancer Early Detection and the department of radiology and Bio-X program also at the university in Stanford, Calif., and colleagues evaluated the agent copper-64 Cl2 (Cu-64 CL2) for its diagnostic capability using two melanoma cell lines, B16F10 and A375M. Results in animal PET studies showed that the agent provided clear visualization of the two cell lines of melanoma with strong uptake by both.

When tumors reached 0.5 to 0.8 centimeters they were treated with Cu-64 CL2 radionuclide therapy at a larger dose. Tumors that underwent therapy showed significantly slower progression than those that were not.

“This study is the first report, to our knowledge, to use CTR1 as a target and Cu-64 Cl2 as an agent for noninvasive PET imaging and radionuclide therapy of malignant melanomas,” wrote Qin et al. “Both melanotic and amelanotic melanomas overexpressing of CTR1 can be successfully visualized by Cu-64 Cl2 PET and then further treated by Cu-64 Cl2, highlighting the promising high clinical translational ability of Cu-64 Cl2 for melanoma management. Our results also suggest a potential strategy for theranostics for other CTR1-expressing tumors.”

This is a preclinical study for a novel agent and further studies are required before the agent is verified for clinical use.