NEW YORK – Blue Earth Diagnostics, Siemens Healthineers, and the University Hospital of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) on Tuesday announced a data-sharing agreement focused on improving prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA)-targeted radioligands for diagnosing and treating prostate cancer.
Under the terms of the agreement, Blue Earth Diagnostics, a Bracco Imaging subsidiary, will share de-identified clinical and imaging data from patients receiving its investigational PET imaging agent, 18F-rhPSMA-7.3, at TUM. Siemens, in turn, will use these data to build out its artificial intelligence-based algorithms to inform prostate cancer diagnosis and treatment.
Siemens' AI platform is designed to streamline image acquisition and interpretation, dose optimization, and small metastases detection, as well as evaluate early disease progression. The data accessed through this partnership will help Siemens build out capabilities that will also be useful for improving the workflow for 18F-rhPSMA-7.3-based imaging before administering PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy to patients.
Siemens aims to guide PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy, including through dose planning and predicting treatment responses. Blue Earth Diagnostics' sister company, Blue Earth Therapeutics, is developing such treatments.
Blue Earth Diagnostics is evaluating 18F-rhPSMA-7.3 as a diagnostic imaging tool for newly diagnosed and biochemically recurrent prostate cancer. In addition to data collected from patients treated at TUM, Blue Earth will give Siemens access to data from ongoing Phase III clinical trials of the imaging agent.
"The TUM experience with rhPSMA has allowed us to investigate the potential performance of a new class of theranostic PSMA-targeting agents that enable efficient labelling with radioisotopes such as 18F for PET imaging or 177Lu for therapeutic use," Matthias Eiber, a professor of nuclear medicine at TUM, said in a statement. "We are happy that 18F-rhPSMA-7.3 PET/CT imaging scans performed at TUM as part of routine patient care in prostate cancer can be part of this project to inform AI-based algorithms for improved PET/CT workflows."