PET/MR of breast cancer patients – better diagnostics and better treatment

The best possible treatment for the individual patient requires good examination tools to be able to assess whether the treatment actually works as intended.

We therefore want to investigate whether a new PET tracer together with PET/MR can provide information about the properties of the cancer tumor and how the tumor responds to a given treatment, in order to be able to assess the treatment effect in breast cancer patients.

The project will examine the study patients with a PET/MR machine with a dedicated PET/MR chest coil. We wish to compare two different PET tracers: radioactive glucose (18F-FDG), which is the most used tracer in PET, with another tracer that is taken up by a type of cell in the tumor called fibroblasts. Malignant tumors have a higher proportion of fibroblasts, which are an important driver for the development of the tumor. We therefore wish to use the tracer 18F-FAPI, which binds to these cells, and we will be able to localize the tumor and identify the microenvironment of the cancerous tumour.

Our hypothesis is that we can get better information about the response of the cancer to treatment by using 18F-FAPI than existing methods such as MRI alone or 18F-FDG PET. The combination of PET and MRI also provides information from two examination methods at the same time, and may prove to be a useful tool for improving the treatment of breast cancer patients.

The Center for Nuclear Medicine/PET has its own pharmaceutical factory with a particle accelerator (cyclotron) so that the center can produce its own radiopharmaceuticals according to current GMP requirements for safe pharmaceutical production.

The project is divided into different work packages:

The project will run over a five-year period, starting in the first quarter of 2024, and is anchored in the Department of Radiology. The Trond Mohn Research Foundation makes the project possible through an allocation of NOK 4.6 million to the Department of Radiology.