Preliminary study of ErbB-2 receptor-targeting tracer

So far breast cancer remains one of the major causes of cancer morbidity and mortality in women throughout the world. High risk of breast cancer are patients with nodal positive tumors and aggressive tumor phenotypes, defined as high or intermediate grade, endocrine receptor negative, and/or Her2/neu positive. ErbB-2, along with ErbB-1, ErbB-3, and ErbB-4, form the ErbB family (or subclass I) of receptor tyrosine kinases. Although ErbB-2 receptor is expressed at low levels in several normal organs and tissues, it is frequently overexpressed in epithelial cancers and the overexpression is associated with poor clinical outcome. This makes ErbB-2 receptor an attractive target for the development of tumor-specific agents. Among the ligands targeting ErbB-2, Herceptin is the first such agent to reach widespread clinical use, in particular for the treatment of metastatic breast cancer. However, the drug has shown cardiotoxicity in some patients. In contrast to large molecules of antibodies, peptides exhibit less toxicity and possess better pharmacokinetic properties such as higher target-to-background ratios and faster blood clearance. This project tempts to development and characterization of a peptide-base radiotracer which may specific bind to ErbB-2 receptors for imaging . ErbB-2(+) breast cancer.

Project ID:PG9706-0095
External Project ID:972001INER056