Abstract
Radiopharmaceuticals are reemerging as attractive anticancer agents, but there are no universally adopted guidelines or standardized procedures for evaluating agent validity before early-phase trial implementation. To validate a radiopharmaceutical, it is desirous for the radiopharmaceutical to be specific, selective, and deliverable against tumors of a given, molecularly defined cancer for which it is intended to treat. In this article, we discuss four levels of evidence—target antigen immunohistochemistry, in vitro and in vivo preclinical experiments, animal biodistribution and dosimetry studies, and first-in-human microdose biodistribution studies—that might be used to justify oncology therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals in a drug-development sequence involving early-phase trials. We discuss common practices for validating radiopharmaceuticals for clinical use, everyday pitfalls, and commonplace operationalizing steps for radiopharmaceutical early-phase trials. We anticipate in the near-term that radiopharmaceutical trials will become a larger proportion of the National Cancer Institute Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) portfolio.
Document Type
Review
Publication Date
3-3-2021
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2021.630827
Funding Information
CK, RH, and JC would like to acknowledge the Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program and Radiation Research Program of the Division of Cancer Treatment and Diagnosis, National Cancer Institute for supporting this work.
Repository Citation
Kunos, Charles A.; Howells, Rodney; Chauhan, Aman; Myint, Zin W.; Bernard, Mark E.; El Khouli, Riham H.; and Capala, Jacek, "Radiopharmaceutical Validation for Clinical Use" (2021). Internal Medicine Faculty Publications. 234.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/internalmedicine_facpub/234
Included in
Internal Medicine Commons, Oncology Commons, Radiation Medicine Commons, Radiology Commons
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Frontiers in Oncology, v. 11, article 630827.
© 2021 Kunos, Howells, Chauhan, Myint, Bernard, El Khouli and Capala.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.