Theranostics, a groundbreaking approach in oncology

In the past several years there were significant advancements in the diagnostic and therapeutic potentials of nuclear medicine.

- Dr Sujith Varma K

When we look back to history, several changes had happened, which started in early days of planar imaging and limited therapeutic potential compounds.

The development of cardiac imaging enhanced with SPECT in early 1980s and later with advent of PET in radiopharmaceuticals and technology have created many new developments in past few years. The hybrid technology with SPECT/CT, PET/CT and PET/MR could treat diseases like thyroid, blood disorders, malignant effusions, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, liver metastasis etc.

Personalized medicine approach

Theranostics is the personalized medicine approach that combine therapeutic agent and diagnostics into a single medical intervention using radiopharmaceuticals.

The diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals are structurally identical.

The diagnostic agent helps in identifying and locating the disease and drug will help in treating the affected cell. The imaging functionality incorporated in theranostic, enables the visualization of internal organs/tissue by using advanced techniques like positron emission tomography, which uses fluorine-18 or gallium-68 for detecting molecular and metabolic changes that are happening in cancer therapy.

The magnetic resonance imaging use gadolinium-based nanoparticle for enhancing resolution and structural visualization of soft tissue. The single-photon emission computed tomography uses technetium-99m for functional imaging of cardiac and neurological disorders. In fluorescence based optical imaging use fluorescent dyes or quantum dots to enable high resolution in surgical and intraoperative settings.