Drug That Tags Cancer Cells Gains Approval

WASHINGTON —  Patients with suspicious chest X-rays are getting a new test to help determine if they need a biopsy for lung cancer: The government approved a drug Wednesday that can literally light up cancerous cells.

Diatide Inc.’s NeoTect will not replace biopsies, in which lung tissue is surgically removed to definitively diagnose cancer.

But because NeoTect works differently than other noninvasive cancer tests, “it is a very valuable tool” for deciding which patient needs a biopsy, said Dr. Florence Houn of the Food and Drug Administration.

About 171,000 Americans will be diagnosed with lung cancer this year, and about 159,000 will die, the American Cancer Society estimates.

NeoTect is for patients whose chest X-rays or CT scans show a mass that doctors cannot determine is benign or cancerous. Sometimes mere scars, for instance, appear suspicious.

Many types of lung cancer produce a protein called somatostatin. NeoTect is injected into the arm and travels to the lungs, where it detects somatostatin by latching onto somatostatin “receptors,” or docking points, on cancer cells. NeoTect carries a radioactive label that lights up the cancer under a common nuclear-medicine camera.