New York City-based Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Boston-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers developed a three-step system using nuclear medicine to target and eliminate colorectal cancer in mice.
Here's what you should know:
1. Researchers achieved a 100-percent cure rate with no treatment-related toxic effects in a mouse population.
2. Radioimmunotherapy of solid tumors using antibody-targeted radionuclides had limited success to date. However, in this trial, researchers used a theranostic agent which was successful.
3. The theranostic agent finds cancer cells and destroys them, leaving healthy cells untouched. In this study, researchers targeted glycoprotein A33 with a biospecific antibody for A33 tumor antigen along with a second antibody.
4. In the study, all nine assessed mice had no trace of cancer and no radiation damage.
Researchers concluded, "The success in murine tumor models comes from the unique quality of the reagents developed by our group, and the reduction to practice methodology, including a theranostic approach that can be readily transferred, we believe, to patients."