New treatment from Vergent Bioscience able to visualize tumors in lung during surgery

The company presented its latest findings at the 60th Annual Meeting of The Society of Thoracic Surgeons (STS24).

The data demonstrate that VGT-309, Vergent's investigational tumor-targeted fluorescent imaging agent, visualizes primary and metastatic tumor tissue in the lung during surgery.

The findings reinforce results from earlier clinical trials of VGT-309 which suggest the agent may help surgeons see difficult-to-find and previously undetected tumors in real time, ensuring all tumor tissue is removed during minimally invasive (MIS) and robotic-assisted lung cancer surgery.

“The data presented today at STS 2024 suggest that VGT-309 could help support more confident and reliable removal of a wide breadth of cancers in the lung that would otherwise be missed during minimally invasive and robotic surgery,” said John Santini, CEO and president at Vergent Bioscience.

“We look forward to the results from our ongoing, phase 2 multi-center VISUALIZE study, which will provide further insight regarding the potential promising impact of VGT-309 for both cancer patients and surgeons.”

The phase 2 study evaluated the frequency that intraoperative molecular imaging (IMI) improved surgical outcomes in 40 individuals with suspected or proven cancer in the lung who were eligible for surgery.

The primary efficacy endpoint was the proportion of patients with at least one clinically significant event, defined as localization of lesions not found by standard surgical techniques, identification of synchronous and occult cancers, and inadequate surgical margin.

Of the 40 participants administered VGT-309 who underwent the standard-of-care surgical resection for suspected lung cancer, 17 had at least one clinically significant event.

“Minimally invasive surgery has become standard of care for many cancer surgeries, but surgeons’ ability to see and remove all tumor tissue during these procedures is often hindered by poor visualization,” said Sunil Singhal, lead investigator and chief of the division of thoracic surgery in the Perelman School of Medicine at University of Pennsylvania.

“The data from the VGT-309 phase 2 efficacy study are encouraging, reinforcing the agent’s potential to help fill this critical gap.”