Penn Medicine Awarded $9 million to Advance Study of Technology That Lights Up Lung Cancer Tumors
Summary
June 29, 2022 Building on Penn Medicines years of research and use of imaging technology that illuminates tumor tissuehelping clinicians more easily detect and remove itthe Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania has received a five-year, $9 million research grant from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) to push the field forward, particularly for lung cancer patients.This technology, intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI), is based on fluorescent beacon molecules that target and bind themselves to tumor cells, essentially making them glowand allowing doctors to more easily distinguish cancer from healthy tissue. Often related to smoking, NSCLCs are the most common form of lung cancer; they are diagnosed in more than 200,000 people in the United States every year and can be life threatening.This funding gives us a tremendous opportunity to further evaluate this important technology and with the goal being to improve outcomes for patients, said grant principal investigator Sunil Singhal MD, the William Maul Measey Professor in Surgical Research and Chief of Thoracic Surgery, and director of the Center for Precision Surgery in the Abramson Cancer Center. Among other achievements, he led the first large, multi-institutional randomized clinical trial of the technology for lung cancerthe results of which are due to be reported May 17, 2022. Data from additional clinical trials have shown it also has the potential to help doctors detect tumorsfor example, following a positive or ambiguous X-ray findingduring non-surgical inspections of patients lungs via bronchoscopy, when doctors use a scope to investigate the passages in a persons lungs.The new grant-funded research project aims to develop improved beacon molecules for NSCLC and imaging equipment to go with it, then test them in clinical trials. The clinical trials of the new technology will be conducted at Penn Medicine, led by Singhal and Edward Delikatny, PhD, a professor of Radiology and Director of Translational Research at the Center for Precision Surgery.Complete resection is the best outcome for patients, and the goal in this program is to improve the chances of achieving that without unnecessary tissue removal, said Ronald DeMatteo MD, the John Rhea Barton Professor of Surgery and Chair of the Department of Surgery at Penn.