Novelos Therapeutics, Inc. (OTCQX: NVLT), a pharmaceutical company developing novel drugs for the treatment and diagnosis of cancer, today announced that the University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center (UWCCC), a leading oncology research institution, has enrolled the first patient in a Phase 1-2 positron emission tomography (PET) imaging trial of I-124-CLR1404 (LIGHT), a cancer-targeted PET imaging agent, in patients with nine solid tumor types, including triple negative breast, soft tissue sarcoma, colorectal, gastric, esophageal, prostate, ovarian, pancreatic and head & neck cancer. Details of the trial design are available at www.clinicaltrials.gov ID: NCT01662284, or at www.novelos.com in the 'Clinical Trials' section. Glenn Liu, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine and Director of the Cancer Therapy Discovery and Development (Phase I) Program at the UWCCC, is the trial's principal investigator.
"We are pleased to begin enrollment in this trial to evaluate LIGHT across multiple solid tumor types," said Dr. Liu. "Oncologists are in need of better tools to diagnose patients more accurately and LIGHT has the potential to improve upon currently used standard approaches. Accurate diagnosis of local, regional and distant metastatic spread is critical for optimal management and improved accuracy of staging may also spare patients the morbidity of unnecessary, non-curative surgical procedures."