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Dynamic patterns of [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 uptake in recurrent prostate cancer lesions

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Abstract

Purpose

Dual-time point PET/CT scanning with [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 in the diagnosis of prostate cancer (PC) has been advanced as a method to increase detection of PC lesions, particularly at early stages of biochemical recurrence and as a potential means to aid the discrimination between benign and pathological prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) uptake. However, the assumption that all PC lesions uniformly exhibit increasing tracer uptake at delayed imaging has not yet been investigated, which this present study aims to address.

Methods

One hundred consecutive patients with biochemically recurrent PC who received standard and late [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 PET/CT (by local protocol at 1.5 h “standard” and 2.5 h p.i. “late”) underwent retrospective evaluation. All lesions with a tracer uptake above local background were analysed with regard to their maximum standardised uptake values at standard and late images (SUVmax) and characterised according to their morphological characteristics.

Results

Seventy-nine of 100 patients had PSMA-positive scans, in whom a total of 185 individual PSMA-positive lesions were identified. These were morphologically characterised as bone lesions (n = 48), solid organ lesions (n = 3), lymph node (LN) lesions (n = 78) and locally recurrent lesions in the prostatic fossa or seminal vesicles (n = 56). The relative uptake between standard and late imaging was considered; all lesions classified as local recurrence presented with increasing (86%) or stable patterns of tracer uptake (14%). In contrast, only 58% of bone lesions exhibited increasing tracer uptake, with 21% exhibiting a stable pattern and 21% exhibiting a decreasing tracer uptake at late imaging.

Conclusion

A heterogeneous pattern of dynamic tracer uptake was observed, with a largely increasing pattern observed for locally recurrent lesions and lymph nodes and a significant proportion of bone lesions exhibiting decreasing tracer uptake. The results are of significance not only in the imaging and identification of PC lesions, but they also have implications for PSMA-directed ligand therapy.

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Acknowledgements

This thesis forms part of the doctorial thesis of I Alberts.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Nuclear Medicine, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Freiburgstr. 18, 3010, Bern, Switzerland

    Ian Alberts, Christos Sachpekidis, Eleni Gourni, Axel Rominger & Ali Afshar-Oromieh

  2. Department of Urology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, University of Bern, Bern, Switzerland

    Silvan Boxler, Tobias Gross & George Thalmann

  3. Department of Nuclear Medicine, University Hospital Münster, Münster, Germany

    Kambiz Rahbar

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All patients published in this manuscript signed a written informed consent form for the purpose of anonymised evaluation and the publication of their data. This evaluation was approved by the ethics committee of the University of Bern (KEK-Nr. 2018-00299).

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Alberts, I., Sachpekidis, C., Gourni, E. et al. Dynamic patterns of [68Ga]Ga-PSMA-11 uptake in recurrent prostate cancer lesions. Eur J Nucl Med Mol Imaging 47, 160–167 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00259-019-04545-8

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