Innovation, Patient care / 27.09.2021
Nantes University Hospital Doses First Patients with Eckert & Ziegler’s Novel Ga-68 Imaging Agent PENTIXAFOR

The Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Nantes (CHU), the French university hospital serving the greater Nantes/Saint-Nazaire metropolitan area, has started to dose first patients with PENTIXAFOR, an innovative imaging compound for the initial staging of cancer patients with symptomatic multiple myelomas. The Ga-68 based radio-diagnostic promises to significantly improve the patient management for early forms of the disease by identifying the optimal therapeutic alternative.

To investigate the potential of PENTIXAFOR the CHU will recruit, on its own account, up to 45 patients in a so-called investigator-initiated study (ISS). Eckert & Ziegler (ISIN DE0005659700, TecDAX), the owner of the rights to the underlying chemokine 4 receptor (CXCR4), supports the CHU team under Professor Caroline Bodet-Milin by providing the compound in exchange for access to certain data.

PENTIXAFOR is being developed by Eckert & Ziegler’s subsidiary Pentixapharm GmbH also on its own as a superiorly sensitive diagnostic for a portfolio of rare blood cancers, among them myelomas and lymphoma. In spring 2021 the European Medicine Agency gave Eckert & Ziegler green light to leapfrog into a phase III clinical examination, thereby allowing her to cut a range of time-consuming evaluation steps. The clinical tests are scheduled to start next year and will involve about 500 patients worldwide.

Given the potential of PENTIXAFOR for improved patient stratification, academic groups like CHU have decided to move ahead on their own and to test PENTIXAFOR right away. To speed up the PENTIXAFOR marketing authorization, Eckert & Ziegler closely cooperates with such initiatives and supports them where feasible.

Multiple myeloma is a form of blood cancer that affects the bone marrow. It is caused by the malignant proliferation of plasma cells in the bone marrow. Globally, multiple myelomas annually affect about half a million people and result in about 100,000 deaths.

Principal Investigator Professor Caroline Bodet-Milin for the PENTIMYELO study stated, “The PENTIXAFOR-PET may improve sensitivity and specificity of PET imaging in symptomatic Multiple Myeloma patients, as compared with FDG-PET. An improved sensitivity of PENTIXAFOR may allow visualization of bone marrow lesions and extra-medullary disease not detected by FDG commonly generating a significant number of false negative results. Moreover, PentixaFor may allow to determine new prognostic value at baseline or during therapy evaluation.”

“The fact that one of the leading centers in France like the CHU has decided to work on the PENTIXAFOR on its own indicates the immense interest among haematologists in the potential of PENTIXAFOR,” comments Dr. Jens Kaufmann, co-founder and general manager of Pentixapharm. “We are delighted to have Professor Françoise Kraeber-Bodéré and Professor Caroline Bodet-Milin of the nuclear medicine department as the principal investigators in these tests.”

Professor Françoise Kraeber-Bodéré is Head of the department of Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital in Nantes, France and an expert of the Oncology committee of the French Society of Nuclear Medicine (SFMN) as well as of the Oncology and Therapy committee of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine. She is on the scientific board of the French Lymphoma research group LYSA and expert for PET in lymphoma and myeloma.

Professor Caroline Bodet-Milin is senior physician in the department of Nuclear Medicine at the University Hospital in Nantes, France and an eminent expert on PET lymphoma and myeloma.

This project is supported by several cancer research associations, among them Siric ILIAD and IRON Labex.

About Eckert & Ziegler.
Eckert & Ziegler Strahlen- und Medizintechnik AG with more than 800 employees is a leading specialist for isotope-related components in nuclear medicine and radiation therapy. The company offers a broad range of services and products for the radiopharmaceutical industry, from early development work to contract manufacturing and distribution. Eckert & Ziegler shares (ISIN DE0005659700) are listed in the TecDAX index of Deutsche Börse.