IMaging Pilot Study of the αvβ6 Integrin Radiotracer [18F]-A20FMDV2 in PAtients With Solid Cancer Types

The epithelial specific integrin αvβ6 is not expressed by resting epithelia (1) but is up regulated in several cancers. It has been estimated that approximately 250,000 or 15% of new cancers (excluding non-melanoma skin cancers) that arise in the UK and USA combined will overexpress αvβ6 (2-4). αvβ6 plays a key role in tumour invasion and carcinogenesis. Strong expression of αvβ6 is associated with significant reduction in life expectancy in patients with colon, cervical, breast or non-small cell lung cancer (3-5). Recently, it has been shown in preclinical studies that antibody targeting of αvβ6 could suppress the growth of oral and breast cancer human xenografts and suppress breast cancer metastasis (6). Thus αvβ6 represents a biologically relevant target for anti-cancer therapy. The proposal is to conduct this study in patients with solid tumours as αvβ6 is expressed exclusively by carcinomas, which are all solid tumours. As the utility of \[18F\]-FBA-A20FMDV2 in patients with cancer has not been evaluated a particular challenge with evaluation of this radiotracer in patients with cancer include potential metabolism and excretion of this radiotracer by the liver and kidney confounding the image quality for lower thoracic and abdominal tumours requiring optimisation of the imaging protocol. In addition, as the patients are likely to be unwell, it is imperative an imaging protocol that is patient-friendly in terms of the scan duration is developed. Additionally it would be ideal to confirm that the uptake of the radiotracer is indeed due to αvβ6 expression on the cancer cells. Therefore in this study, it is planned to evaluate the feasibility of performing such a study in patients with a variety of solid tumours.