Radiopharmaceuticals are reemerging as attractive anticancer agents, but there are no universally adopted guidelines or standardized procedures for evaluating agent validity before early-phase trial implementation. To validate a radiopharmaceutical, it is desirous for the radiopharmaceutical to be specific, selective, and deliverable against tumors of a given, molecularly defined cancer for which it is intended to treat. In this article, we discuss four levels of evidence-target antigen immunohistochemistry, in vitro and in vivo preclinical experiments, animal biodistribution and dosimetry studies, and first-in-human microdose biodistribution studies-that might be used to justify oncology therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals in a drug-development sequence involving early-phase trials. We discuss common practices for validating radiopharmaceuticals for clinical use, everyday pitfalls, and commonplace operationalizing steps for radiopharmaceutical early-phase trials. We anticipate in the near-term that radiopharmaceutical trials will become a larger proportion of the National Cancer Institute Cancer Therapy Evaluation Program (CTEP) portfolio.
Keywords: nuclear medicine; preclinical; radiation oncology; radiopharmaceutical; validation.
Copyright © 2021 Kunos, Howells, Chauhan, Myint, Bernard, El Khouli and Capala.