Emerging PET/CT Radiopharmaceutical May Double Detection of Liver Foci in Patients with Neuroendocrine Tumors

New prospective comparative research suggests that the PET/CT radiopharmaceutical ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE may offer significant advantages over ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE for detecting liver foci in patients with known or suspected neuroendocrine tumors (NETs).

For the phase 2 multicenter, non-randomized study, presented at the recent Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) conference, researchers compared ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE (at four and 20 hours post-injection) and ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE in 41 patients with known NETs and four patients with suspected NETs. The study authors noted that 71.1 percent of the cohort had stage 3 or 4 tumors.

The researchers found that PET/CT imaging with ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE four hours after injection detected an average of 348 liver foci in comparison to an average of 169.5 liver foci with ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE. At 20 hours after injection, ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE detected over 186 more liver foci on average than ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE (353.5 vs. 167), according to the study authors.

“The improved diagnostic performance coupled with the flexibility for imaging at optimal timepoints with 64Cu-SARTATE have important clinical implications to inform treatment decisions,” noted study co-author Dale Bailey, PhD, a nuclear medicine physicist affiliated with the Department of Nuclear Medicine at the Royal North Shore Hospital and the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney in Sydney, Australia, and colleagues.

(Editor’s note: For additional coverage of the recent SNMMI conference, click here.)

The study authors determined that ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE offered a nearly 90 percent higher sensitivity rate than ⁶⁸Ga-DOTATATE in cases involving discordant foci (94.7 percent vs. 5.4 percent).

The researchers also noted practical benefits with ⁶⁴Cu-SARTATE.

“The use of copper-64 (⁶⁴Cu) as an imaging isotope may be advantageous over gallium-68 (⁶⁸Ga) due to its longer half-life (12.7 h vs. 68 min) and ability to be centrally manufactured,” added Bailey and colleagues.

Reference

1. Lengyelova E, Kong G, Singhai N, et al. Diagnostic performance of 64Cu-SARTATE compared to 68Ga-DOTATATE in patients with known or suspected neuroendocrine tumors with focus on foci-to-liver uptake ratio findings. Presented at the Society of Nuclear Medicina and Molecular Imaging conference, May 30-June 2, 2026, Los Angeles. Available at: https://jnm.snmjournals.org/content/67/supplement_1/261151 .