In the June Issue of The Journal of Nuclear Medicine

June 1, 2022

Letter from Ukraine: Kmetyuk Yaroslav, a Kyiv physician whose hospital departments perform both nuclear medicine imaging and radiation therapy, reports on the challenges of providing continuity of care in an environment of wartime shortages and uncertainties.

Discussions with leaders: Lale Kostakoglu talks with Peter J. O’Dwyer, Group Cochair of the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group–American College of Radiology Imaging Network Cancer Research Group, about the role of precision medicine in cooperative trials.

Issues and Controversies
PSMA−/¹⁸F-FDG+ mCRPC: Jadvar focuses on the utility of adding ¹⁸F-FDG imaging in the clinical setting of prostate-specific membrane antigen radioligand therapy in metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Editorial
VISION trial and PET criteria: Kuo and colleagues review the origins of the VISION trial and the development of novel PET/CT criteria for patient selection.

The State of the Art
Guidelines for theranostics: Lee and colleagues from Australia summarize suggested theranostic guidelines for nuclear medicine, addressing specialist qualifications, patient care, radiopharmaceutical production, radiation safety, and dosimetry.

Continuing Education
¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA and prostate cancer: Sartor and Herrmann provide an educational overview of the critical elements of the VISION phase III trial and the ways in which these elements are likely to shape regulatory decision making and clinic practice.

Hot Topics
Tau, amyloid, and atrophy: Malpetti and colleagues review the evolution of PET radiotracers that bind selectively to amyloid-β plaques and tau neurofibrillary tangles, highlighting the promise of tau PET in precision medicine approaches to Alzheimer disease.

THERANOSTICS

Comparative PSMA ligand dosimetry: Feuerecker and colleagues compare pretherapeutic clinical dosimetry data for ¹⁷⁷Lu-rhPSMA-7.3 and ¹⁷⁷Lu-PSMA I&T in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

²²⁵Ac-PSMA RLT in mCRPC: Lee and Kim detail the results of a metaanalysis of reports on the therapeutic effects of ²²⁵Ac-PSMA radioligand therapy in patients with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer.

Featured Article of the Month
PET and DLBCL response: Sonni and colleagues contrast the diagnostic performances of ⁶⁸Ga-PSMA-11 PET/CT, multiparametric MRI, and the 2 techniques combined with that of histopathology in detection, intraprostatic localization, and determination of local extension of primary prostate cancer.

Special Contribution
Clinical ¹⁸F-DCFPyL PET: Song and colleagues review key data that justify clinical use of ¹⁸F-DCFPyL, as well as aspects of protocol implementation and image interpretation important to physicians who will interpret ¹⁸F-DCFPyL PET/CT and PET/MR imaging.

PET and FAPI dimers: Younis and colleagues provide perspective on the promise and challenges of fibroblast activation protein inhibitors in targeted radionuclide theranostics and preview a related article in this issue of JNM.

⁶⁸Ga-labeled FAPI dimer: Zhao and colleagues detail the design of and initial studies with ⁶⁸Ga-DOTA-2P(fibroblast activation protein inhibitor)₂ to optimize pharmacokinetics and evaluate its effectiveness compared with monomeric analogs.

ONCOLOGY

¹²⁴I-MIBG PET/CT in pheochromocytoma: Weber and colleagues analyze the sensitivity, specificity, and positive- and negative-predictive values of ¹²⁴I-MIBG PET in suspected recurrence of pheochromocytoma and compare detection rates with those of contrast-enhanced CT.

FAPI PET/CT in HNCUP: Gu and colleagues evaluate the performance of ⁶⁸Ga-FAPI PET/CT for detecting primary tumors in patients with head and neck cancer of unknown primary and negative ¹⁸F-FDG findings.

Predictors of toxicity after ⁹⁰Y RE: Cousins and colleagues report on pretreatment blood cytokine levels as predictors of toxicity after ⁹⁰Y radioembolization in intrahepatic malignancies, with potential as a biomarker-driven personalized approach to treatment.

⁶⁸Ga-FAPI PET pitfalls: Kessler and colleagues summarize common findings and pitfalls in interpretation and assessment of fibroblast-activation protein inhibitor PET/CT imaging as part of the diagnostic workup of patients with cancer.

PD-L1 and melanoma brain mets: Nimmagadda looks at the potential for noninvasive quantification of programmed cell death ligand 1 in immunotherapeutic approaches in melanoma brain metastases and previews a related article in this issue of JNM.

PET and PD-L1 in melanoma: Nienhuis and colleagues use ¹⁸F-BMS986192 PET to assess programmed cell death ligand 1 expression and variability in metastatic tracer uptake in relation to tumor response, with a focus on melanoma brain metastases.

Surveillance PET/CT in MCC: Mahajan and colleagues investigate the diagnostic and prognostic value of ¹⁸F-FDG PET/CT for surveillance imaging in patients treated for stage III Merkel cell carcinoma.

PARPi-FL in BCC diagnosis: Sahu and colleagues describe the use of this exogenous nuclear poly(adenosine diphosphate ribose) polymerase–targeted fluorescent contrast agent in combined fluorescence and reflectance confocal microscopy to improve basal cell carcinoma diagnosis.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE / ADVANCED IMAGE ANALYSIS

NSCLC PET radiomics: Kolinger and colleagues explore how radiomic features associated with intratumoral heterogeneity in non–small cell lung cancer are affected by changes in ¹⁸F-FDG uptake time, image reconstruction, lesion delineation, and radiomic binning settings.

NEUROLOGY

Covariance analysis of ictal SPECT: Taherpour and colleagues analyze covariance patterns on ictal perfusion SPECT using a scaled subprofile model for unbiased identification of patterns predictive of outcomes in temporal lobe epilepsy surgery.

Flortaucipir and 4R tau lesions: Josephs and colleagues explore whether ¹⁸F-flortaucipir uptake on PET is associated with differential affinities for histologic lesion type in 4-repeat tauopathies such as progressive supranuclear palsy and corticobasal degeneration.

GluN2B subunit imaging in humans: Rischka and colleagues report on the performance characteristics of (R)-¹¹C-Me-NB1 in a first-in-humans study using PET to map GluN2B-enriched N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors in the brain.

Preclinical SV2A PET in HD: Bertoglio and colleagues delineate changes in synaptic vesicle glycoprotein 2A density by means of ¹¹C-UCB-J small-animal PET imaging in the central nervous system of mice with Huntington disease.

CARDIOVASCULAR

In vivo arterial FAPI imaging: Wu and colleagues explore the potential of a ⁶⁸Ga-labeled fibroblast-activating protein inhibitor for PET/CT imaging of fibroblast activation in the arterial wall.

RADIOCHEMISTRY

Featured Basic Science Article:
Radiotherapy ligands for FAP: Xu and colleagues describe development and initial studies in mice of 2 albumin binder–conjugated fibroblast activation protein inhibitor radiotracers for cancer therapy.

PHYSICS AND INSTRUMENTATION

Ultra-low ¹⁸F-FDG activity: Hu and colleagues evaluate the feasibility of ultra-low ¹⁸F-FDG activity in total-body PET/CT oncologic studies.

For the full June 2022 issue, visit the JNM website.