Effects of an Unlabeled Loading Dose on Tumor-Specific Uptake of a Fluorescently Labeled Antibody for Optical Surgical Navigation

Purpose Intraoperative optical imaging to guide surgeons during oncologic resections offers a unique and promising solution to the ambiguity of cancer margins to tactile and visual assessment that results in devastatingly high rates of positive margins. Sequestering of labeled antibodies by normal tissues with high expression of the antibody target, or “antigen sinks”, diminishes the efficacy of these probes to provide contrast between the tumor and background tissues by decreasing the amount of circulating probe available for uptake by the tumor and by increasing the fluorescence of non-tumor tissues. We hypothesized that administering a dose of unlabeled antibody prior to infusion of the near-infrared (NIR) fluorescently labeled antibody would improve tumor-specific uptake and contrast of the fluorescently labeled probe by occupying extra-tumoral binding sites, thereby increasing the amount of labeled probe available for uptake by the tumor.