Clinical Research Directory

11C-Metomidate PET/CT for Endocrine Hypertension and Characterisation of Adrenal Tumours

* 10% of patients with hypertension potentially have the treatable condition - primary aldosteronism (PA). This is caused by either bilateral adrenal disease (\~40%), managed with lifelong medications; or unilateral disease (\~60%), cured with laparoscopic surgery (adrenalectomy). Current diagnosis of PA includes a screening test with aldosterone-renin ratio, followed by a confirmatory salt loading test (in most patients) to demonstrate unsuppressed aldosterone levels. Of note, some patients with suppressed aldosterone after confirmatory tests (also termed low-renin hypertension) may also have unilateral adrenal tumors. * The difficulty with identifying curable unilateral disease is due to adrenal vein sampling (AVS): an invasive, and technically-difficult procedure. An alternative novel imaging, 11C-Metomidate Positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT), can detect adrenal tumors which are over-producing aldosterone. It is non-invasive, non-operator-dependent, and potentially may identify more patients with curable unilateral disease. The results from our pilot study in 25 patients with confirmed PA (ClinicalTrials.gov NCT03990701, PA\_CURE) showed that 11C-Metomidate PET-CT exhibited comparable performance to AVS in subtyping PA, and this should be validated in a larger study. * In addition, 11C-Metomidate is also able to differentiate adrenocortical lesions in the adrenal gland from other lesions found in adrenal tissue, such as adrenomedullary lesions (e.g. pheochromocytoma). * Hence, the investigators hypothesize that 11C-metomidate PET-CT can accurately (1) identify patients with surgically curable unilateral adrenal disease among hypertensive Asians with primary aldosteronism (PA\_CURE 2 / PA\_MTO EH study) and (2) differentiate adrenocortical lesions from other lesions in patients with adrenal tumors (PA\_MTO AT study)

Adrenal Tumors - Pathogenesis and Therapy

The pathogenesis of adrenal tumors is still not fully elucidated and the treatment options for malignant tumors are poor. The current study investigates different aspects of the pathogenesis of adrenal tumors and evaluates different therapeutic options in patients with adrenocortical carcinoma.