Stanford Medicine Cancer Center has become the world’s first healthcare provider to treat a patient with SCINTIX biology-guided radiotherapy, a radiopharmaceutical-directed therapy designed by RefleXion Medical to better target and overcome motion challenges in treating metastatic cancers.

Used on the RefleXion X1 system, it is the only dual-treatment modality radiotherapy platform that can treat patients with solid tumors of any stage, and uses the individual biology of each cancer to autonomously determine where and how much radiation to deliver, second-by-second.

Providers inject a patient with fludeoxyglucose F18, which initiates emissions from cancer cells. The RefleXion X1 system, which combines PET and linear accelerator technologies, tracks all types of motion, including breathing, digestion and unexpected patient movements, and continously constructs a map from the detected emissions to autonomously target the tumors, which light up during treatment.
In metastatic cases, radiotherapy is often not considered an option. But in overcoming the bottlenecks presented by movement, as well as the toxicity of treating more than one tumor in a single session, SCINTIX holds the potential to change this, according to Todd Powell, president and CEO of RefleXion.

“Clinical literature and emerging practice guidelines are beginning to incorporate the importance of treating all visible disease in certain cancers. SCINTIX was conceived with that end in mind, and to work in combination with drug therapies to improve outcomes, especially for patients with advanced-stage cancers,” he said in a statement.

In February, the FDA cleared the therapy’s use with fludeoxyglucose F18 for bone and lung tumors, which can arise from primary cancers or metastatic lesions from other cancers. It was previously designed as a breakthrough device for lung tumors because of its ability to precisely manage tumor motion.

The treatment requires the RefleXion X1 system to rotate at 60 revolutions per minute (rpm), making it the only radiotherapy machine to spin at this speed.

Other cancer centers in the U.S. will begin providing the therapy to patients over the next few weeks, including City of Hope Comprehensive Cancer Center in Southern California, and sites in Pennsylvania and Texas. Providers in New Jersey, Connecticut, and Oregon will also adopt the treatment by the end of 2023.

Dr. Lucas Vitzthum, clinical assistant professor of radiation oncology-radiation therapy at Stanford, says that future research and development will focus on whether this treatment can be scaled to treat multiple tumors in parallel, which is a major challenge with existing motion management methods.

"The technology has the potential to treat other tumors where there is high radiotracer uptake with low background uptake. New radiotracers are also being investigated which could further improve the therapeutic ratio of SCINTIX," he told HCB News.

The company plans to adapt SCINTIX therapy to work with different radiopharmaceuticals for different cancer types.

Molecular Imaging Homepage