March 1, 2012 — Cell>Point announced it entered into a licensing agreement for South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines with Hyun Imc Co. Ltd., headquartered in Seoul, South Korea, for the kit manufacture, marketing and distribution of Cell>Point’s cancer and cardiology nuclear imaging product.
The product is based on its technetium-99m-labeled ethylenedicysteine-n-acetyl-glucosamine (99mTc-EC-G) radiotracer. Hyun Imc will be responsible for sponsoring clinical studies and seeking regulatory approval in each of the countries covered by the license. Cell>Point will receive an upfront payment, and development and regulatory milestone payments, as well as royalties on gross sales from Hyun Imc.
99mTc-EC-G, invented at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center and acquired by Cell>Point, is a target-specific molecular imaging radiopharmaceutical that has moved into a Phase 3 lung cancer imaging trial and Phase 2 cardiology imaging trial. It is injected intravenously and then imaged using a single photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) camera.
99mTc-EC-G Phase 3 lung cancer imaging trial
For the Phase 3 lung cancer study, all patients will be imaged on combination SPECT/CT (computerized tomography) and PET/CT cameras. Where combination cameras are not available, a special workstation will be used to integrate the patient images taken from the stand-alone SPECT or PET cameras, as the case may be. Using a workstation to integrate the images allows the medical site to take full advantage of 99mTc-EC-G without the need for a new combination SPECT/CT camera on the premises. This should significantly expand the utilization of the installed SPECT camera base in the United States and the rest of the world, which is already orders-of-magnitude greater than the PET camera base. The lung cancer trial will be followed by Phase 4 trials in lymphoma and breast, liver, colorectal, prostate, and head and neck cancers.
99mTc-EC-G Phase 2 cardiology imaging trial
In a separate clinical trial, 99mTc-EC-G has moved from a Phase 1b to a Phase 2 cardiovascular imaging study. The product is the same as that used in the oncology trials. 99mTc-EC-G exhibits very low uptake in the normal heart; however, it exhibits very high uptake in heart areas that have suffered ischemia (i.e., profound deprivation of blood flow), such as a myocardial infarction. The Phase 2 cardiovascular trial will involve patients who have suspected coronary artery disease and compare 99mTc-EC-G images of the heart with images obtained from a full “stress/rest” myocardial perfusion imaging (MPI) study.
It should be noted that one of the objectives of the study is to compare the results from the “rest” only portion of the 99mTc-EC-G study to the results from the full “stress/rest” MPI study. Based on clinical evidence from the previous Phase 1b study, Cell>Point believes clinical information learned from the 99mTc-EC-G “rest” study will be potentially greater than that of the full “stress/rest” MPI study, which uses 99mTc-sestamibi for the stress image and thallium-201 for the rest image and takes five to seven hours. If the “rest” only 99mTc-EC-G study yields as good as or greater clinical information compared to traditional MPI, then the 99mTc-EC-G rest study—which can be conducted in 30 to 45 minutes — should dramatically improve cardiovascular imaging.
For more information: www.cellpointweb.com
April 10, 2024 
![(A) PET images of [68Ga]Ga-DOTA-ZCAM241 uptake at baseline and 3, 7, and 12 days after injection as inflammatory arthritis developed in single representative individual mouse. Images are normalized to SUV of 0.5 for direct comparison between time points. (B) CD69 immunofluorescence Sytox (Thermo Fisher Scientific) staining of joints of representative animals during matching time points.](/sites/default/files/styles/feed_medium/public/PET%20Tracers.jpeg?itok=P5Di6MIe)
