By Meredith Mann
Lighting up cancer cells with an imaging agent makes it easier to surgically remove all of the malignant tissue.
The patient, a woman with ovarian cancer, is on the operating table, while a surgeon attempts to locate and remove all of the diseased tissue.
Then, with the flick of a switch, fluorescent light shines into the surgical site. Before the operating team’s eyes, the tumors – some of which aren’t otherwise visible, or easily palpable even to expert fingers – pop into view, glowing a bright purple to the naked eye.
After years of scientific searching for a way to make malignant cells easier to find, for the first time, this type of “glowing tumor” technology was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November 2021.
The FDA approval of the imaging agent, a drug called Cytalux (pafolacianine), is for use in ovarian cancer treatment. Patients with confirmed or suspected cancer receive Cytalux by IV before surgery. The glow it brings to tumor cells allows surgeons to target those areas for removal, and to leave healthy tissue alone.
One of the largest U.S. clinical trial sites for the agent is the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center at the University of Pennsylvania, in a partnership with On Target Laboratories of Indiana.
“Lighting up cancer, which helps to identify lesions that may be difficult to find – especially in the presence of scar tissue or other organ damage – enables more complete identification and surgical removal of cancer that could have otherwise been missed,” according to Janos L. Tanyi, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in Penn’s Perelman School of Medicine and principal investigator at Penn’s clinical trial site for Phase 2 and Phase 3 studies of Cytalux.
Penn investigators and other industry partners have pioneered additional targeted imaging technologies for lung, brain, breast, sarcoma, head and neck, and urinary tract cancers.
“This approach is an important step toward greater precision during surgery for ovarian cancer,” says Sunil Singhal, MD, director of the Center for Precision Surgery and the William Maul Measey Professor in Surgical Research. “Our studies for other indications continue, in an array of different cancers.”
Which means that science is beginning to see the light on how to better treat cancer.