Data from a terminated study on iron oxide nanoparticle magnetic resonance imaging for head and neck tumors

Node positive head and neck squamous cell carcinomas (HNSCCs) patients exhibit worse outcomes in terms of regional neck control, risk for distant metastases and overall survival. Smaller non-palpable lymph nodes may be inflammatory or may harbor clinically occult metastases, a characterization that can be challenging to make using routine imaging modalities. Ferumoxytol has been previously investigated as an intra-tumoral contrast agent for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for intracranial malignancies and lymph node agent in prostate cancer. Hence, our group was motivated to carry out a prospective feasibility study to assess the feasibility of ferumoxytol dynamic contrast enhanced (DCE)-weighted MRI relative to that of gadolinium-based DCE-MRI for nodal and primary tumor imaging in patients with biopsy-proven node-positive HNSCC or melanoma. Although this institutional review board (IRB)-approved study was prematurely terminated because of an FDA black box warning, the investigators sought to curate and publish this unique dataset of matched clinical, and anatomical and DCE MRI data for the enrolled five patients to be available for scientists interested in molecular imaging.