Targeting of Iodine-123-Labelled Tumour-Associated Monoclonal Antibodies to Ovarian, Breast, and Gastrointestinal Tumours

Antibody guided lymphangiography in the staging of cervical cancer

“…Radiolabelled tumour associated monoclonal antibodies are increasingly being used for the radioimmunolocalisation of primary and metastatic malignant disease and encouraging results have been reported (Mach et al, 1981;Epenetos et al, 1982). Unfortunately, imaging using intravenously administered radiolabelled antibodies is limited by background radioactivity in the blood pool and extravascular spaces and, furthermore, antibodies may be catabolised and removed before reaching their target resulting in only a very small tumour ' uptake.…”

Axillary node status in breast cancer patients prior to surgery by imaging with Tc-99m humanised anti-PEM monoclonal antibody, hHMFG1

“…Radioimmunoscintigraphy of breast cancer started in this department with murine monoclonal antibody 19 years ago (Epenetos et al, 1982). The aim of this study was to detect malignant involvement in impalpable axillary lymph nodes prior to surgery in women with proven breast cancer by imaging with a technetium-99m radiolabelled 'humanised' monoclonal antibody.…”

Third Gordon Hamilton-Fairley Memorial Lecture. Tumour markers—Where do we go from here?

“…The problem of evaluationg them individually and of determining the most effective and economic way to deploy these powerful tools in relation to each other is daunting. The antigenic targets studied by RIL to date have mainly been the secreted antigens hCG, aFP and CEA but there are interesting studies also with melanoma antigens (Larson et al, 1983), and other antigenic targets (Epenetos et al, 1982;Farrands et al, 1982). The ability to achieve tumour localisation in the presence of high concentrations of antigen in serum and other body fluids is interesting but we do not yet know whether it is better to have antibodies of high avidity or whether a particular immunoglobulin class is superior for this purpose, or whether antibody fragments are advantageous compared with intact immunoglobulin.…”

“…The problem is that, so far, there is a shortage of membrane-bound antigens which have been characterised sufficiently to show they have sufficient specificity for clinical purposes. Autoradiographic studies of an antibody directed at a supposedly membrane bound antigen appear to show a similar distribution to that of anti-CEA (Epenetos et al, 1982) so that even where immunocytochemical and other studies suggest that an antigen is membrane bound in vivo, autoradiography is needed to confirm this. Of the monoclonal antibodies we have tested so far only one has shown marked affinity for binding to tumour cell membranes.…”