Efficacy considerations for U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval of diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals

Regulatory Agencies and PET/CT Imaging in the Clinic

Purpose of Review

The regulatory steps necessary to bring new PET radiopharmaceuticals to the clinic will be reviewed. The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) provides approval to manufacture and use diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, including those for cardiovascular PET/CT. Medicare not only provides insurance reimbursement for imaging procedures for its beneficiaries but also sets an example for third-party insurers to cover these procedures.

Recent Findings

FDA provides extensive guidance for performing studies to obtain the safety and efficacy data needed to approve PET radiopharmaceuticals, and the pace of approval has recently increased. There also has been considerable progress in insurance coverage for PET by Medicare. Several promising agents for cardiovascular PET imaging are in the development pipeline. Challenges remain, however, including low levels of reimbursement and the application of appropriate use criteria for imaging procedures.

Summary

It is important for cardiologists to understand the regulatory steps involved in translating PET radiopharmaceuticals to the clinic. Recent progress in both FDA approvals and Medicare coverage should facilitate the clinical use of new PET agents for molecular imaging of the heart.

Recent advances in clinical trial design considerations in Thera"nostics"

Theranostics in drug development is an evolving framework, known as combining 'thera' (a therapeutic drug) with 'nostics' (a diagnostic imaging drug) and with the latter being mostly used to select patient for evaluation of safety and efficacy of an investigational therapeutics. However, when a diagnostic imaging drug is still investigational, patient selection performance of a nostics imaging has not been demonstrated. Clinical trials conducted to assess the effect of an investigational therapeutics in a theranostics setting may focus only on the therapeutics development and not necessarily require definitive truth standard or reference standard to also assess patient selection performance of an investigational diagnostic imaging drug. We propose an In-Parallel with Leveraging development pathway in view of current practice of theranostics for a nostics imaging development. We rationalize minimum statistical metrics necessary for patient selection to allow for rigors of a nostics or diagnostics imaging drug development. We highlight tangible benefits with newer design considerations. We articulate potential indications of a nostics development including prognostic, predictive and treatment response monitoring in addition to patient selection. We further articulate potential additional clinical utilities of risk stratification and clinical management. To take full advantage and the likely payoff in the benefit of leveraging, a group sequential design or an adaptive design for the therapeutic trial is highly encouraged.

The Use of Published Clinical Study Reports to Support U.S. Food and Drug Administration Approval of Imaging Agents

Pharmaceutical companies typically perform prospective, multicenter phase 3 clinical studies to support approval of a new imaging agent by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). In uncommon situations, the FDA has approved imaging agents based solely, or in large part, on the clinical study experience described in published reports, including reports of exploratory (i.e., phase 1 or 2) studies performed at a single clinical site. We performed a survey of published reports to assess the potential of the reported information to support FDA approval of a commonly cited investigational imaging agent. Our survey revealed critical data limitations in most publications, all of which reported exploratory clinical studies. Here we summarize the precedent for FDA approval of imaging agents using effectiveness data from publications, FDA guidance, and our experience in reviewing publications. We also present a key-data checklist for investigators to consider in the design, conduct, and reporting of exploratory clinical studies for publication. We encourage editors and peer reviewers to consider requiring these key data when reviewing these reports for publication.

Evaluation of the Efficacy of Targeted Imaging Agents

This paper presents our adaptation of Fryback and Thornbury's hierarchical scheme for modeling the efficacy of diagnostic imaging systems. The original scheme was designed to evaluate new medical imaging systems but is less successful when applied to evaluate new radiopharmaceuticals. The proposed adaptation, which is specifically directed toward evaluating targeted imaging agents, has 6 levels: in vitro characterization, in vivo animal studies, initial human studies, impact on clinical care (change in management), impact on patient outcome, and societal efficacy. These levels, particularly the first four, implicitly define the sequence of studies needed to move an agent from the radiochemistry synthesis laboratory to the clinic. Completion of level 4 (impact on clinical care) should be sufficient for initial approval and reimbursement. We hope that the adapted scheme will help streamline the process and assist in bringing new targeted radiopharmaceuticals to approval over the next few years.

Targeted nanotechnology for cancer imaging

Targeted nanoparticle imaging agents provide many benefits and new opportunities to facilitate accurate diagnosis of cancer and significantly impact patient outcome. Due to the highly engineerable nature of nanotechnology, targeted nanoparticles exhibit significant advantages including increased contrast sensitivity, binding avidity and targeting specificity. Considering the various nanoparticle designs and their adjustable ability to target a specific site and generate detectable signals, nanoparticles can be optimally designed in terms of biophysical interactions (i.e., intravascular and interstitial transport) and biochemical interactions (i.e., targeting avidity towards cancer-related biomarkers) for site-specific detection of very distinct microenvironments. This review seeks to illustrate that the design of a nanoparticle dictates its in vivo journey and targeting of hard-to-reach cancer sites, facilitating early and accurate diagnosis and interrogation of the most aggressive forms of cancer. We will report various targeted nanoparticles for cancer imaging using X-ray computed tomography, ultrasound, magnetic resonance imaging, nuclear imaging and optical imaging. Finally, to realize the full potential of targeted nanotechnology for cancer imaging, we will describe the challenges and opportunities for the clinical translation and widespread adaptation of targeted nanoparticles imaging agents.

Is ioflupane I123 injection diagnostically effective in patients with movement disorders and dementia? Pooled analysis of four clinical trials

OBJECTIVES

To pool clinical trials of similar design to assess overall sensitivity and specificity of ioflupane I123 injection (DaTSCAN or ioflupane ((123)I)) to detect or exclude a striatal dopaminergic deficit disorder (SDDD), such as parkinsonian syndrome and dementia with Lewy bodies.

DESIGN

Pooled analysis of three phase 3 and one phase 4 clinical trials. These four trials were selected because they were the four studies used for the US new drug application to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

SETTING

Multicentre, open-label, non-randomised.

PARTICIPANTS

Patients with either a movement disorder or dementia, and healthy volunteers.

INTERVENTIONS

Ioflupane ((123)I) was administered.

OUTCOME MEASURES

Images were assessed by panels of 3-5 blinded experts and/or on-site nuclear medicine physicians, classified as normal or abnormal and compared with clinical diagnosis (reference standard) to determine sensitivity and specificity.

RESULTS

Pooling the four studies, 928 participants were enrolled, 849 were dosed and 764 completed their study. Across all studies, when images were assessed by on-site readers, ioflupane ((123)I) diagnostic effectiveness had an overall (95% CI) sensitivity of 91.9% (88.7% to 94.5%) and specificity of 83.6% (78.7% to 87.9%). When reads were conducted blindly by a panel of independent experts, the overall sensitivity was 88.7% (86.8% to 90.4%) and specificity was 91.2% (89.0% to 93.0%).

CONCLUSIONS

In this pooled analysis, the visual assessment of ioflupane ((123)I) images provided high levels of sensitivity and specificity in detecting the presence/absence of an SDDD. Ioflupane ((123)I) imaging has the potential to improve diagnostic accuracy in patients with signs and symptoms of a movement disorder and/or dementia.

TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER

NCT00209456.

Clinical translation of molecular imaging agents used in PET studies of cancer

Over recent years, there has been a rapid expansion in our knowledge of the factors that regulate tumor growth; this has resulted in the identification of new therapeutic targets and improvements in the long-term survival of cancer patients. New noninvasive biomarkers of drug targets and pathway modulation in vivo are needed to guide therapy selection and detect drug resistance early so that alternative, more effective treatments can be offered. The translation of new therapeutics into the clinic is disappointingly slow, expensive, and subject to high rates of attrition often occurring at late stages (phase 3) of development. In an attempt to mitigate these delays and failures, there has been resurgence in the development of new molecular imaging probes for studies with positron emission tomography (PET) to characterize tumor biology. In the assessment of therapeutic effects, PET allows imaging of entire tumor burden in a noninvasive repeatable manner. This chapter focuses on the clinical translation of PET imaging agents from bench to bedside. New probes are being used to study a diverse range of processes such as angiogenesis, apoptosis, fatty acid metabolism, and growth factor receptor expression. In the future, validation of these novel imaging probes could allow more innovative therapies to be adapted earlier in the clinic leading to improved patient outcomes.