Why Should I Register and Submit Results?.Roswell Park is one of the sites offering this innovative treatment on a compassionate use protocol. Available in Europe for a decade, this treatment is currently under FDA review pending the outcome of large clinical studies. Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) is a type of molecular therapy that’s used to treat neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). *About Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT) Iyer for another three years, but it’s remarkable. I no longer have to get those shots every four weeks. “All my blood work and tumor markers are fine and I’m not on any medication.

Her treatment is complete and she is cancer free. This result meant that Elaine could safely end the sandostatin injections. I was stunned and amazed, and very, very relieved.” However, in Elaine’s case, her expectation of NETs lighting up all over her body, and especially in her liver did not occur. I was told to try to drink as much of it as I could because the more I could drink, the better the image. “After the gallium injection, I was to drink three glasses of water.

This gallium scan was nothing and very quick,” she says, describing the process. “The octreoscan was much more difficult because I had to lie still for hours, and I got itchy. The radioactivity (low dose and short-lived) appears on the scan, which combines PET and CT imaging, essentially “lighting up.” In addition, finding NETs in this manner means a patient would likely be eligible for a new treatment, called Peptide Receptor Radionuclide Therapy (PRRT)*, that uses hormone-tagged radiation to find and bind to the cancer cells, delivering radiation directly to the cells.Įlaine got her scan and was pleasantly surprised by its ease. With this new imaging, instead of looking for glucose, the scan detects gallium-68 dotatate, a radioactive agent that is injected into the patient and attaches to NET cells. However, unlike most cancers, NETs do not consume glucose rapidly. Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scans are not typically useful for NETs because the scan detects cancer by finding the body areas (cancer cells or a tumor) where glucose is consumed or metabolized abnormally fast. But Roswell Park was getting it soon and I wanted to learn if it could help me.” “It was so new, that nobody in the area had it yet. “They said it would make NET cancer just light up,” she remembers.

It was at one of these conferences that she learned about a new kind of scan called Netspot® that could detect even the smallest NETs anywhere in the body. To learn more about her disease, Elaine attended the Living with Neuroendocrine Cancer conferences, annual meetings hosted by Roswell Park where NET experts, patients and caregivers can network and learn about the latest approaches to managing the rare condition. Still, worrisome findings would appear on her CT, octreoscan and MRI, including tiny, but unidentifiable spots on her liver. She eventually began medical treatment consisting of monthly injections of sandostatin, a hormone that regulates the endocrine system, and may cause side effects such as constipation and blood sugar issues or problems with malabsorption. Her initial tumor seemed confined to one enlarged lymph node, which was removed, yet living with the possibility that other tumors could be lurking undetected was very disconcerting and made treatment decisions unclear. Elaine Palumbo was eager to undergo the Netspot scan to learn whether she had any other tumors.Įlaine Palumbo knows all this and more about NETs. Since they don’t show up on typical PET scans, finding them at early stages or detecting metastasis is difficult. While NETs are typically small and slow growing, they can develop anywhere in the body, most commonly the stomach, intestines, pancreas, lungs and liver. Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are called the zebra of cancers because they are rare, and behave very differently from other cancer types.

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