Radiotracer approved for brain tumour diagnostics

4th May 2022

The G-BA is the highest decision-making body in the German health care system and decides which medical services can be claimed by insured patients. Although FET has not yet been approved under pharmaceutical law in Germany, it may be used in specialised centres for patient care.

FET is used as a radiotracer in positron emission tomography (PET) and is preferentially absorbed in tumour cells. The method is, therefore, particularly useful for detecting the extent of brain tumours, identifying new tumours following therapy, and assessing treatment response.

Patient with suspected brain tumour. The FET PET (right) shows a metabolically active tumour (red/yellow area), which is very difficult to recognise in the MRI images (left, centre). The biopsy revealed a glioblastoma.
Copyright:
— Forschungszentrum Jülich

The radioactively labelled amino acid FET was developed in the 1990s at the Institute of Nuclear Chemistry and has been the subject of intensive research since the turn of the millennium under the direction of Prof. Dr. Karl-Josef Langen. “Our team, in cooperation with the university hospitals in Aachen, Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf, has published more than 170 experimental and clinical studies on FET PET and has examined more than 8,000 patients with brain tumours. Today, the method is used worldwide,” explains Langen. “The fact that the FET PET method is now recognised for the standard care of patients in Germany is a great honour for the joint team from the Institute for Neuroscience and Medicine (INM-3, INM-4, INM-5) and confirms the clinical and social relevance of the research work,” says Langen.

In the meantime, medical specialists from a radius of more than 300 kilometres draw on the expertise of the Jülich Institutes and the Nuclear Medicine Clinic of the University Hospital Aachen. Current research work is concentrating on combining FET PET with high-field magnetic resonance imaging (hybrid PET-MRI) in order to further increase the diagnostic significance. Artificial intelligence is also used in the image evaluation.

Contact

Prof. Dr. med. Karl-Josef Langen
Institute of Neurosciences and Medicine, Physics of Medical Imaging (INM-4) / Nuclear Medicine Clinic of the University Hospital Aachen
Phone: 02461 61-5900
E-mail: k.j.langen@fz-juelich.de

Press contact

Annette Stettien
Corporate Communications
Tel.: 02461 61-2388
E-mail: a.stettien@fz-juelich.de

Last Modified: 27.07.2022