Abstract
Rationale: Sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB) is a well-established minimally invasive staging procedure that maps the spread of tumour metastases from their primary site to the regional lymphatics. Currently, the procedure requires the local peri-tumoural injection of radiolabelled and/or optical agents, and is therefore operator dependent, disruptive to surgical workflow and restricted largely to a small subset of malignancies that can be readily accessed externally for local tracer injection. The present study set out to determine whether intravenous (IV) infusion of a tumor-targeted tracer could identify sentinel and metastatic lymph nodes (LNs) in order to overcome these limitations. Methods: We examined 27 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC), 18 of whom were clinically node negative (cN0). Patients were infused intravenously with 50mg of Panitumumab-IRDye800CW prior to surgical resection of their primary tumour with neck dissection and/or SLNB. Lymphadenectomy specimens underwent fluorescence molecular imaging to evaluate tracer distribution to LNs. Results: A total of 960 LNs were analysed, of which 34 (3.5%) contained metastatic disease. Panitumumab-IRDye800CW preferentially localized to metastatic and sentinel LNs as evidenced by a higher fluorescent signal relative to other lymph nodes. The median MFI of metastatic LNs was significantly higher than the median MFI of benign LNs (0.06 versus 0.02, p < 0.05). Furthermore, selecting the highest five fluorescence intensity LNs from individual specimens resulted in 100% sensitivity, 85.8% specificity and 100% negative predictive value (NPV) for the detection of occult metastases and 100% accuracy for clinically staging the neck. In the cN+ cohort, assessment of the highest 5 fluorescence LNs per patient had 87.5% sensitivity, 93.2% specificity and 99.1% NPV for the detection of metastatic nodes. Conclusion: When intravenously infused, a tumour-targeted tracer localized to sentinel and metastatic lymph nodes. Further validation of an IV tumor-targeted tracer delivery approach for SLNB could dramatically change the practice of SLNB, allowing its application to other malignancies where the primary tumour is not accessible for local tracer injection.