The association of intra-therapeutic heterogeneity of somatostatin receptor expression with morphological treatment response in patients undergoing PRRT with [177Lu]-DOTATATE

What Was Tested

Researchers studied Octreotide and Somatostatin in this clinical trial publication.

Purpose of this study was to evaluate the association of the spatial heterogeneity (asphericity, ASP) in intra-therapeutic SPECT/ CT imaging of somatostatin receptor (SSR) positive metastatic gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms (GEP-NEN) for morphological treatment response to peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT).

Secondly, the researchers correlated ASP derived form a pre-therapeutic OctreoScan (ASP[In]) and an intra-therapeutic [177Lu]-SPECT/CT (ASP[Lu]).

Who Took Part

According to the abstract, 33 patients were involved.

By PubMed's age tags, the people studied were middle-aged adults, older adults and people over 80, both men and women.

Data from first therapy cycle [177Lu-DOTA0-Tyr3]octreotate ([177Lu]-DOTATATE)-PRRT was retrospectively analyzed in 33 patients (m = 20; w = 13; median age, 72 [46-88] years).

How the Study Was Run

The evaluation of response to PRRT was performed according to RECIST 1.1 in responding lesions [RL (SD, PR, CR), n = 104] and non-responding lesions [NRL (PD), n = 27].

The association of SSR tumor heterogeneity with morphological response was evaluated by Kruskal-Wallis test and receiver operating characteristic curve (ROC).

The optimal threshold for separation (RL vs.

NRL) was calculated using the Youden-index.

Relationship between pre- and intra-therapeutic ASP was determined with Spearman's rank correlation coefficient (ρ) and Bland-Altman plots.

What Was Measured

The subject headings attached to it are Bone Neoplasms, Disease-Free Survival, Gastrointestinal Neoplasms, Liver Neoplasms, Lymphatic Metastasis, Neoplasm Proteins and Neuroendocrine Tumors.

What This Means in Plain Language

This is a clinical trial of Octreotide and Somatostatin in 33 patients.

With fewer than 40 people, it is a small study, so it is better read as an early signal for further research than as a settled answer.

Results are reported in around 7 sentences of the abstract; we leave them to the paper itself rather than summarise them.

The publication is from 2019 (PloS one), a journal based in United States.

More context: the Octreotide compound page and the Somatostatin compound page, all human trials.