North American Scientific has unveiled the latest new addition to the platinum-based treatment used to help treat lung cancer.

Addressing the 51st Annual Society of Nuclear Medicine (SNM) in Philadelphia, the firm said it had received encouraging results from an interim review of an ongoing European clinical trial of its Hynic-Annexin V product being conducted by its subsidiary Theseus Imaging.

Hynic-Annexin imaging enables doctors to determine how platinum-based chemotherapy is affecting subjects, enabling more effective use of the treatment.

Now experts say that Hynic-Annexin imaging could reduce the number of patients receiving futile platinum-based chemotherapy by as much as eighty per cent - ensuring the drug is targeted more effectively.

Dr Neil Steinmetz, Theseus's medical director, explained the significance of the breakthrough.

"We continue to be encouraged by the data suggesting that baseline Annexin imaging alone may be able to identify a group of patients highly unlikely to benefit from standard chemotherapy, and that careful comparison of baseline and post-treatment images could identify additional patients unlikely to benefit," he said.

"If this initial data is confirmed, those patients with a reasonable chance to benefit could receive standard platinum-based chemotherapy and those unlikely to benefit from this standard treatment could be offered less toxic alternatives."

North American Scientific is a leader in products for radiation therapy and patient assessment, and has supplied hundreds of hospitals with equipment worldwide.