At Vanderbilt University Medical Center, in association with Stanford Medicine, we are establishing Light Guided Surgery as tomorrow's standard of care. Patients who are eligible can potentially join this research. To find out if you are eligible, please contact your doctor. Currently, we are including patients in the following clinical trial:
Head & Neck Cancer: Dual-Modality Imaging Clinical Trial
Eben L. Rosenthal, MD, Principle Investigator
Roan Raymundo, Study Coordinator
To be considered, you must:
- Be 19 years or older
- Not be pregnant or breastfeeding
- Have a biopsy-proven diagnosis of Squamous Cell Carcinoma of the head and neck
- Be planned for standard of care surgery of the tumor
- Be determined a suitable candidate for the clinical trial by your physician
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Near-infrared (NIR) labeled EGFR antibody, panitumumab-IRDye800, is systemically infused in high-grade glioma patients and specifically binds to tumor cells across the blood-brain barrier to improve intraoperative visualization during MRI-guided resection.Light Guided Surgery uses fluorescent markers that make the tumor light up during surgery. We are currently investigating if this will help surgeons to remove tumor tissue.
Today surgeons rely on their vision and touch to assess what should be removed during tumor resection. However, 15-30% of all head and neck cancer patients leave the operation room with tumor cells left behind. For these patients, the chances of tumor recurrence are high and overall survival low.
We are currently investigating if Light Guided Surgery could help solve this problem.
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Cervical lymph node staging if of great prognostic value for patients with head and neck cancer. Currently, to identify the presence of metastatic lymph nodes during the surgical resection of head and neck cancer, patients undergo a neck dissection or sentinel node biopsy procedure whereby some or all of the lymph nodes are taken out of the neck and sent for pathological evaluation.
We hope to show that the combined use (i.e. dual-modality) of 89Zr‑panitumumab and panitumumab‑IRDye800 can help surgeons to identify metastatic lymph nodes prior to and during the surgical procedure with equal or better accuracy than the current methods.
Panitumumab‑IRDye800 is an investigational imaging agent that contains a dye molecule that surgeons and researchers can image using light waves both during surgery and after the surgery on removed tissues. Recently we have shown that using this drug, we can identify metastatic lymph nodes from benign, normal lymph nodes based on the fluorescent signal that comes from the panitumumab‑IRDye800. However, because of the limited penetration depth of the fluorescence signal, it is challenging to detect these lymph node(s) in the body.
89Zr‑panitumumab is an investigational imaging agent that contains a small amount of radiation, which makes it visible in positron emission tomography (PET) scans. We hypothesize that by using 89Zr‑panitumumab we can identify metastatic lymph nodes on preoperatively acquired (non-invasive) PET scans. If so, this information we can then use to guide us during the surgery. Because for the dual-modality study we will intravenously infuse both panitumumab-IRDye800 and 89Zr‑panitumumab, we can use the fluorescent signal coming from panitumumab-IRDye800 to precisely localize the metastatic lymph node(s).
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Patients with glioma often undergo surgical procedures to reduce or remove their cancer. Doctors who perform this type of surgery are well‑trained in removing all the cancer that can be seen during your operation. However, there are times when the tumor looks like normal brain tissue or there are cancer deposits that are too small to be seen by the surgeon.
We hope to show that panitumumab-IRDye800, an imaging agent, is safe to use in brain cancer patients. We will also evaluate if panitumumab-IRDye800 can help surgeons to better distinguish cancer cells from normal brain tissue and identify small cancer lesions that cannot be seen using current imaging methods.
Panitumumab‑IRDye800 is an investigational imaging agent that contains a dye molecule that surgeons and researchers can image using light waves both during surgery and after the surgery on removed tissues.