CYTALUX (pafolacianince), a drug that binds to ovarian cancer tissue and glows when exposed to fluorescent light, has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to help surgeons detect ovarian tumors during surgical procedures in patients.

A Purdue University spokesperson said that Philip Low, Purdue University’s Presidential Scholar for Drug Discovery, invented the drug. Low described in a press release that when a surgeon turns on the near-infrared light during the surgery, “those lesions light up like stars against a night sky.”

“While many surgeries result in complete resection of all cancer tissue, a substantial fraction unfortunately leave buried or concealed tumor tissue behind, often resulting in recurrence of the cancer and sometimes even death,” Low said.

He added, “To help prevent the latter outcomes, we have designed a cancer-targeted fluorescent dye that homes specifically to cancer cells that express a folate receptor and causes them to fluoresce brightly upon illumination with near infrared light.”

Low explained that cancer cells require folate, a B vitamin, to divide rapidly, so he invented the drug that tagged a folate compound with a fluorescent dye. The drug is administered intravenously to a patient before surgery.

“Cancer cells have an enormous appetite for this vitamin,” Low said in the release, “and we exploited their greed for folic acid by attaching a fluorescent dye to it.”

Low said that when the illumination occurs, the surgeon can locate and resect malignant lesions that he or she might otherwise have overlooked during the surgery.

A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania Health System said that while Purdue’s Phil Low synthesized the drug, researchers at the school were the principal investigators for the phases 1, 2 and 3 of trials and found promising results.

Cytalux is the first tumor-targeted fluorescent agent for ovarian cancer approved by the FDA.(SD-Agencies)