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Weill Cornell Medicine has received a projected $4 million grant from the National Cancer Institute, part of the National Institutes of Health, to conduct a clinical trial testing whether a new imaging approach could reduce the need for biopsies to monitor prostate cancer.

The five-year grant, with a possible two-year extension, will evaluate whether adding an imaging modality called Prostate Specific Membrane Antigen (PSMA)- Positron Emission Tomography (PET) Computed Tomography (CT) to active surveillance regimens can rule out the presence of cancer that requires treatment. PSMA-PET CT uses a radioactive diagnostic agent to detect a protein that is found on the surface of prostate cells and at higher levels on prostate cancer cells. The technique is already used to detect the spread of cancer in men with high-risk prostate cancers and cancer recurrence in men who are in remission.

“We hope to use PSMA-PET CT as a less invasive and less costly alternative to biopsy in men undergoing active surveillance for low or moderate-risk prostate cancers,” said the study’s principal investigator Dr. Timothy McClure, an assistant professor of urology and radiology in the Division of Interventional Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine.