Chest
Clinical InvestigationsRelationship between Gallium 67 Citrate Scanning and Transferrin Receptor Expression in Lung Diseases
Section snippets
Patients
Nine patients with lung cancer who underwent 67Ga scan and operation were studied. Four of them were positive for 67Ga scan and five were negative. Eight patients with histologically proven diffuse interstitial lung disease (five IPF, two sarcoidosis, and one pneumoconiosis) were also studied with 67Ga scan (Table 1). Histologically normal tissues obtained from four nonsmoker patients who underwent operation for lung cancer were also investigated.
67Ga Citrate Scanning
67Ga is a cyclotron-produced radionuclide with a
RESULTS
In normal lung tissues, bronchoalveolar epithelial cells, bronchial glands, vascular endothelial cells, and other interstitial cells were negative for TFR. Only alveolar macrophage observed scarcely in alveolar spaces of normal lung tissues showed mildly positive TFR staining on its membrane, but no clusters of alveolar macrophages were observed. All lung cancer tissue specimens from four patients with lung cancer who were positive for 67Ga scan showed strong positive TFR staining on the
DISCUSSION
67Ga scan has been used as a tumor scintigram to detect lung cancer and as an indicator of active diffuse interstitial lung diseases. First, the present study demonstrated that TFR were strongly expressed on lung cancer tissues of all 67Ga scan-positive patients, but TFR were not expressed on those of 67Ga scan-negative patients. These results suggest uptake of 67Ga combined with transferrin by cancer cells whose membranes express TFR.
It has been reported that 85 to 95 percent of lung cancers
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The writers thank Professor Hidehiko Saito, First Department of Internal Medicine, Nagoya University School of Medicine, and Dr. Tatsunari Satake, Pathology section, Nagoya Ekisaikai Hospital, for their valuable suggestions and comments.
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Manuscript received June 14; revision accepted November 26.