Surgeons removing ovarian cancer rely on sight and touch to find every deposit, and microscopic residual disease drives recurrence. Cytalux (pafolacianine) made some of that tissue visible.
Injected before surgery, it binds folate receptor alpha, overexpressed on many ovarian tumors, and fluoresces under near-infrared light so surgeons can detect lesions that inspection alone would miss. It is approved as an adjunct for intraoperative identification of malignant lesions in adults with ovarian cancer.
Cytalux later added a lung cancer indication, extending it beyond gynecologic surgery. Its adoption depends on surgeons having compatible near-infrared imaging systems, making the installed base of that equipment, rather than the drug itself, the main constraint on uptake.
