Can Radioligand Therapy Have an Impact for Women with Breast Cancer?

Emphasizing the ongoing treatment challenge of metastatic breast cancer, Matt Covington, M.D., said radioligand therapy has “revolutionary” potential for women with breast cancer. However, in a recent interview, Dr. Covington noted a lag in the development of radioligand therapies for breast cancer.

“I think the targets for prostate cancer and neuroendocrine tumors were a little bit more obvious than for breast cancer, and that is one reason why there is some lag that we’ve seen and continue to experience with radioligand therapy for breast cancer,” posited Dr. Covington, a nuclear and breast imaging radiologist at Summit Physician Specialists in Salt Lake City, Utah. “I also wonder if there's some potential that there needs to be increased investment in women's health, in research in general, and this could be one manifestation where women are potentially falling a little bit behind in terms of therapies and advances that are very possible and could exist but currently don't.”

Noting that some radioligand therapies are being evaluated in early phase clinical trials for breast cancer, Dr. Covington pointed out that many breast cancers express prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) on positron emission tomography (PET). He added that a subgroup of breast cancers “are likely to” express somatostatin receptors that are typically involved in the detection and staging of neuroendocrine tumors.

“ … (These agents are) already FDA approved. Clinics are already using these. They know how to (use) them. We just would need to expand that FDA approval toward breast cancer, and trials are undergoing right now, especially to test, for example, PSMA expression in triple-negative breast cancer, which is a subtype of breast cancer that really needs new therapeutic options. So that one especially has my interest,” added Dr. Covington.

“I don't expect that most triple-negative breast cancers will be able to be targeted this way, but some proportion of them, I believe, likely, will be able to be targeted, and this could be a great advance for those patients.”

(Editor’s note: For related content, see “Researchers Show Higher Breast Cancer Upstaging Rate with 18F-FAPI PET/CT,” “Positron Emission Tomography and De-Escalation of Breast Cancer Treatment: What Emerging Research Reveals” and “Emerging Insights on the Use of FES PET for Women with Lobular Breast Cancer.”)

For more insights from Dr. Covington, watch the video below.