A Pilot Study of ¹⁸F-Alfatide PET/CT Imaging for Detecting Lymph Node Metastases in Patients with Non-Small Cell Lung...

Angiogenesis plays a key role in tumor development and α_vβ₃ integrin are overexpressed on the endothelial cell surface of newly forming vessels. ¹⁸F-Alfatide has favorable properties for α_vβ₃ integrin targeting and showed potential for imaging angiogenesis with Positron Emission Tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT). In this study, 13 patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) who underwent ¹⁸F-Alfatide PET/CT before surgery were enrolled. The uptake of all dissected lymph nodes (LNs) of ¹⁸F-Alfatide were assessed visually and analyzed with a maximum and mean standard uptake value (SUV_max, SUV_mean) and SUV ratios. LN metastases were pathologically confirmed and 20 of 196 LNs were malignant. All malignant LNs were successfully visualized on ¹⁸F-Alfatide PET/CT in patients and the sensitivity, specificity and accuracy was 100.0%, 94.9% and 95.4%, respectively. SUV_max, SUV_mean and SUV ratios in malignant LNs were significantly higher than in benign LNs for NSCLC patients (P < 0.001). The same result was observed in patients with adenocarcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma (P < 0.001). The ¹⁸F-Alfatide parameter shows high sensitivity (83.9-100%), specificity (78.6-96.7%) and accuracy (81.7-96.9%) according to thresholds calculated from receiver operating characteristic curve. Our results suggest that ¹⁸F-Alfatide PET/CT is valuable in the diagnosis of metastatic LNs for NSCLC patients.