SNMMI: Kuo discusses imaging in Pluvicto patients, new Alzheimer’s disease treatment

TORONTO — AuntMinnie.com spoke with prostate cancer imaging expert Phillip Kuo, MD, PhD, of the City of Hope in Duarte, CA, at the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging annual meeting about new developments in PET/CT imaging in patients on Lu-177 PSMA-617 therapy.

Kuo, who led development of imaging guidelines used to develop Lu-177 PSMA-617 (Pluvicto, Novartis), noted that the theranostics treatment is approved for use in advanced stages of the disease, but that trials are underway to test it in patients at earlier stages.

“We may soon be able to help men even before they have chemotherapy, so we can start to treat them with Pluvicto before they have to deal with all the toxicities of chemotherapy,” he said.

In addition, Kuo discussed recent developments in neuroimaging, and touched on the role PET plays in identifying and monitoring patients receiving lecanemab (Leqembi), an anti-amyloid antibody approved in the U.S. last year for Alzheimer’s disease.

In development trials for the treatment, researchers showed that amyloid PET scans can measure the decrease in amyloid from the brain as a result of the drug, he noted.