Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Apr;54(2):81-85.
doi: 10.1007/s13139-020-00639-6. Epub 2020 Apr 8.

From Theranostics to Immunotheranostics: the Concept

Niklaus Schaefer  1 , John O Prior  1 , Margret Schottelius  1   2
Affiliations
Review

From Theranostics to Immunotheranostics: the Concept

Niklaus Schaefer et al. Nucl Med Mol Imaging. 2020 Apr.

Abstract

Immunotheranostics will be an important development in the future of nuclear medicine and medical oncology. It describes the synergy of theranostic procedures in nuclear medicine and immune oncology (IO) treatment. In brief, it takes advantage of molecular imaging and subsequent targeted modulation of the-in most cases immunosuppressive-tumor microenvironment (TME) by diagnostic and therapeutic radioisotopes. This is of high importance since only a fraction of patients receiving IO is currently being cured by this exciting therapy option. We therefore envision the concept of immunotheranostics as a powerful mean to augment the success of IO treatment in the future and thus the urgent need to further develop the interaction and joint action of nuclear medicine and medical oncology for substantially improved therapy outcome for cancer patients.

Keywords: Immunooncology; Immunotheranostics; PD-1; PD-L1; PET/CT; Theranostics.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of InterestNiklaus Schaefer, John O. Prior, and Margret Schottelius declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Immunotheranostics combines synergistically the principle of immunooncology and theranostics by imaging and modulating the tumor microenvironment. This Sankey diagram also reflects the relative proportion of articles published in PubMed in each field in 2019 (dark blue and orange; left)
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Partly hypothetical Kaplan-Meier curves showing the possible impact of personalized immunotherapy which is guided by patient selection, e.g., by multiple biopsy results or whole-body PET immune-imaging and of immunotheranostics which aims to visualize and therapeutically target the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Strosberg J, El-Haddad G, Wolin E, Hendifar A, Yao J, Chasen B, et al. Phase 3 trial of (177)Lu-dotatate for midgut neuroendocrine tumors. N Engl J Med. 2017;376:125–135. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1607427. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Emmett L, Willowson K, Violet J, Shin J, Blanksby A, Lee J. Lutetium177PSMA radionuclide therapy for men with prostate cancer: a review of the current literature and discussion of practical aspects of therapy. J Med Rad Sci. 2017;64:52–60. doi: 10.1002/jmrs.227. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kratochwil C, Bruchertseifer F, Giesel FL, Weis M, Verburg FA, Mottaghy F, et al. 225Ac-PSMA-617 for PSMA-targeted -radiation therapy of metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer. J Nucl Med. 2016;57:1941–1944. doi: 10.2967/jnumed.116.178673. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bensch F, van der Veen EL, Lub-de Hooge MN, Jorritsma-Smit A, Boellaard R, Kok IC, et al. 89Zr-atezolizumab imaging as a non-invasive approach to assess clinical response to PD-L1 blockade in cancer. Nat Med. 2018;24:1852–1858. doi: 10.1038/s41591-018-0255-8. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Niemeijer AN, Leung D, Huisman MC, Bahce I, Hoekstra OS, van Dongen GAMS, et al. Whole body PD-1 and PD-L1 positron emission tomography in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Nat Commun. 2018;9:4664. doi: 10.1038/s41467-018-07131-y. - DOI - PMC - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources