New Marker for Sentinel-Node Biopsy Shows High Specificity

99mTc-tilmanocept is a highly specific, less toxic alternative to the blue dye currently used for cancer detection in sentinel node biopsy (SNB), and has shown a very low level of false positives in detecting several types of cancer, according to results of a pooled analysis of three phase 3 studies presented at the 34th Congress of the European Society of Surgical Oncology (ESSO).

"99mTc-tilmanocept is designed to target and accumulate in macrophages present in tumour-draining lymphatic tissue," explained lead investigator Frederick Cope, PhD, CNS, Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Dublin, Ohio, speaking here on October 31. "Results from these studies demonstrate its ability to specifically target and accumulate in macrophages, leading to localisation in tumour-draining pathology-positive lymph nodes that is 18 times higher than in all disease-negative lymph nodes," he continued.

Dr. Cope and colleagues performed their analysis on data from the 3 trials, which comprised 384 patients. The results from each SNB using 99mTc-tilmanocept were confirmed in each patient by complete lymph-node dissection.