Determination of individual organ masses for 90Y-anti-CD66 radioimmunotherapy: Influence on therapy planning

Dosimetry is important in the development of radioactive pharmaceuticals, especially for optimizing radionuclide therapy with respect to risk-benefit analysis. To calculate the applied absorbed doses in the target and risk organs standard phantom masses are frequently used. However, deviations to the true organ mass can lead to suboptimal decisions in dose finding studies. To estimate the magnitude of deviations introduced when using standard phantom masses instead of individual organ masses, we investigated 10 patients treated with radioimmunotherapy using 90Y labelled anti-CD66 antibody. The use of standard phantom masses instead of individually measured organ masses results in mean deviations for liver, spleen and kidneys of 2% (Min. -22%, Max. 34%), -3% (Min. -34, Max. 100%) und -8% (Min. -37, Max. 38%), respectively. For the administered therapeutic activity differences of -16% (Min. -45%, Max. 4%) were observed depending on the used organ mass. These results demonstrate that using standard phantom masses for dosimetry before radionuclide therapy is not adequate.