ARTIC
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An assessment of apoptosis and necrosis in triple negative and HER2+ breast cancer using PET imaging with 18F-C2Am
IRAS ID
339846
Contact name
Luigi Aloj
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
The ARTIC trial will assess the utility of a radiotracer (18F-C2Am) as a novel technique to image cell death (both apoptosis and necrosis) in patients with surgically resectable breast cancer. Tumours that are responding to effective treatment show early signs of cell death and we expect them to show significant binding of 18F-C2Am, as this has been observed previously in preclinical animal studies.
This study consists of three stages. The patients will all be undergoing neoadjuvant (pre-surgical) systemic anti-cancer treatment prior to surgery for their breast cancer. Stage one will focus on assessing the non-specific signal of 18F-C2Am and will be carried out on 4 patients who have not yet received any anti-cancer treatment. Stage two will focus on assessing how specifically 18F-C2Am binds to apoptotic and necrotic cells and will be carried out on 4 patients who have received 1 cycle of anti-cancer treatment. This stage will also allow optimisation of the PET imaging protocol. Stage three will assess how well 18F-C2Am performs at detecting treatment induced cell death by imaging 15-19 patients both before and after 1 cycle of systemic anti-cancer treatment. The analysis will be done by image parameter comparison and validated with histological markers of cell death in breast biopsies.
REC name
East of England - Cambridge South Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
25/EE/0156
Date of REC Opinion
31 Jul 2025
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion