The development of the SHL will allow radiolabeling of cold kits including Gallium-68 PSMA-11 (gallium-68 gozetotide, Illuccix®) for use with RefleXion’s BgRT technology (SCINTIX® therapy). Ga-68 PSMA-11 is currently approved in nuclear medicine for the diagnosis of late-stage prostate cancer and for selection of patients for Lutetium-177 PSMA therapy.
The establishment of SHLs supports greater access for Ga-68 PSMA-11 to be used in the field of external-beam radiotherapy, that will offer a new treatment option for all prostate cancer stages. SHLs will enable greater flexibility for provision of radiotracers on-demand and in the shortest spatial distance to the linear accelerator, thus saving crucial resources.
“We are excited to be part of this unique project, which will transfer and expand the use of Gallium-68 into radiation therapy,” stated Dr. Harald Hasselmann, CEO of Eckert & Ziegler AG. “In addition to providing our extensive technological and regulatory expertise in the areas of radiosynthesis and quality control, this engagement offers great potential for our product GalliaPharm®.”
“This agreement strengthens Telix’s collaborations with Eckert & Ziegler and RefleXion, two companies with whom we have built very strong working relationships. The combination of Illuccix with RefleXion’s innovative SCINTIX therapeutic technology is another example of the potential for Gallium-68-based PSMA imaging technology to enhance the management and treatment of prostate cancer,” said Richard Valeix, Group Chief Commercial Officer of Telix.
“Our goal is to expand the patient population that can benefit from SCINTIX therapy to patients with prostate cancer through bringing Illuccix to market as a new BioGuide for SCINTIX,” said Thorsten Melcher, Ph.D., Chief Business Officer at RefleXion. “We are pleased to have two experienced partners at our side to jointly lead the SHL project to success.”
https://telixpharma.com/news-views/telix-pharmaceuticals-and-reflexion-medical-enter-strategic-collaboration-for-treatment-of-high-risk-cancers/
Telix Pharmaceuticals and RefleXion Medical Enter Strategic Collaboration for Treatment of High-Risk CancersMelbourne (Australia) - 8th July 2020Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited is delighted to announce it has entered into a strategic collaboration agreement with Hayward, USA based RefleXion Medical, a therapeutic oncology company pioneering biology-guided radiotherapy1 (BgRT) as a new modality for treating all stages of cancer, to investigate the clinical utility of combining the companies’ technologies to improve treatment for high-risk or recurrent prostate and aggressive kidney cancers.
RefleXion Medical, a therapeutic oncology company pioneering biology-guided radiotherapy* (BgRT) as a new modality for treating all stages of cancer, and Telix Pharmaceuticals Limited (ASX: TLX), a radiopharmaceutical company developing molecularly-targeted radiation (MTR) products, today announced a strategic collaboration to investigate the clinical utility of combining the companies’ technologies to improve treatment for high-risk or recurrent prostate and aggressive kidney cancers.
Under the agreement, the parties will evaluate several new positron emission tomography (PET) tracers, including 68Ga-PSMA-11 for prostate cancer and 89Zr-Girentuximab for kidney cancer1, to evaluate their potential in guiding BgRT to treat disease.
“The Telix tracers show considerable potential for detecting metastatic disease,” said Phuoc Tran, M.D., Ph.D., professor of radiation oncology and molecular radiation sciences, oncology and urology at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. “Combining them with RefleXion’s BgRT, which is designed to treat metastatic disease, could bring us a step closer to improving outcomes for these cancer types.”
BgRT uses biological emissions from a patient’s cancer cells created by injecting a small amount of a targeting molecule carrying a positron-emitting radioisotope known as a PET tracer to guide external-beam radiotherapy (EBRT). As the PET tracer binds to the tumor cells, it produces emissions that signal the cancer’s location. The RefleXion™ X1 machine detects these emissions using PET detectors and responds in real-time to direct BgRT to each tumor and destroy it, even in moving tumors. The most commonly used PET tracer is 18F-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), which can detect many different cancer types. However, its performance in certain tumor types and organs remains limited, particularly for kidney and prostate cancers. Telix’s new PET tracers are designed to target specific cancer types and are expected to be more accurate in this clinical setting.
“Telix’s cancer-specific PET tracers may provide a more complete and robust signal to guide BgRT for difficult-to-treat cancers of the prostate and kidney,” said Thorsten Melcher, Ph.D., chief business officer at RefleXion. “This collaboration is an important step in providing proof-of-concept that PET-based tumor emissions can guide our BgRT using different tracers and in different cancer types.”
Prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA) imaging with 68Ga-PSMA-11 is suited for imaging high-risk or recurrent prostate cancer due to its ability to detect the spread of cancer outside the prostate bed. PSMA imaging is emerging as a potential new standard of care for detecting and staging prostate cancer, subject to approval by regulators2. For renal cancer applications, Telix’s 89Zr-Girentuximab, the first zirconium-labeled PET tracer in late-stage clinical development, targets carbonic anhydrase IX (CA9), an antigen that may differentiate renal cancer, including metastases, from benign disease.
“The use of Telix’s cancer-specific PET tracers may enable us to guide RefleXion’s BgRT in patients with more advanced forms of prostate and kidney cancer,” said Christian Behrenbruch, Ph.D., CEO at Telix. “This collaboration also allows us to leverage the investment we’ve made in these tracers by expanding both their indications and overall procedure volumes.”
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