12 Jan, 2017
Promising results of treatment with internal radionuclide therapy
A paper in New England Journal of Medicine report on promising results from a phase 3 study of the radioactive substance lutetium-177 (Lu177) in patients with advanced cancer in the mid-gut. The study present results from 229 patients with metastatic neuroendocrine tumors treated with standard of care by means of octreotide, or Lu177 in combination with octreotide. Following 20 months the proportion of patients that were alive and progression-free was 10.8% among those receiving standard of care alone, and 65.2% among those who also received Lu177. The results implicate the potential of internal radionuclide therapy in the treatment of patients with advanced cancer .