Study: CD206-targeting Manocept platform may provide potential avenues to enhance diagnosis in Kaposi Sarcoma

Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc. (NYSE MKT: NAVB), a biopharmaceutical company focused on precision diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals, today announced that collaborators from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) presented results at the 2014 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) conference, April 5-9, 2014 in San Diego, CA, highlighting the potential utility of imaging agents derived from Navidea's Manocept™ platform in identifying affected tissues and lymph nodes in patients with Kaposi Sarcoma (KS). The investigators concluded that, based on the results obtained, labeled imaging agents from the CD206-targeting Manocept platform provide potential avenues to enhance diagnosis and staging in this disorder.

"There is a growing number of Kaposi Sarcoma patients worldwide. In advanced states, KS affects not only the skin but involves other organs and tissues, including lymph nodes," commented Michael S. McGrath, MD, PhD, Professor, Departments of Laboratory Medicine, Pathology, and Medicine, UCSF. "With few current tumor-specific diagnostic options to determine if and where the tumor has spread from the skin, the receptor-targeting properties and intrinsic performance of Manocept-derived agents represent a potentially potent imaging approach to address unmet needs in this area such as identifying, staging and assessing disease activity in a range of diseases, including KS."

The study presented on April 9^th was designed to define macrophage subsets in all forms of KS and determine if the CD206 mannose receptor is present on the tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) as well as KS tumor cells. The data presented reinforce earlier results in KS and demonstrate in 66 evaluable cases and controls obtained from the AIDS and Cancer Specimen Resource (ACSR) that the CD206 mannose receptor is highly expressed on both TAMs and KS tumor cells, thereby making it an attractive target for precision diagnostic agents derived from the Manocept platform. In their conclusions, the authors noted such agents may show promise in potentially imaging KS-involved tissues, staging the disease, and detecting its spread in the body to potential visceral sites of disease.

Source: Navidea Biopharmaceuticals, Inc.