Detection of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) and monitoring of response to therapy is still challenging due to their cellular heterogeneity. Initial preclinical studies suggest that NENs imaging with the use of somatostatin receptor (SSTR) antagonist may be advantageous in comparison to the widely used SSTR agonists.

The project aims to select the most promising SSTR antagonist (LM-3 vs p-Cl-BASS) for clinical translation and develop a kit-formulation for NEN imaging (WP1), to initiate a clinical feasibility study (WP2) including development of a robust, reproducible quantitative imaging method (WP3). Within phase I clinical study ten patients with proven SSTR expression on agonist imaging will be treated with 99mTc-labelled SSTR antagonist. The safety, tolerability, human pharmacology, dosimetry and NEN targeting properties will be assessed applying the concurrently developed quantitative imaging protocol.

99mTc-labelled SSTR antagonist is expected to be an effective, widely available method for quantitative assessment of SSTR NENs status, allowing a personalized therapeutic approach.