Theragnostic in neuroendocrine tumors

Abstract

In the last few decades, the incidence and prevalence of neuroendocrine tumors has been increasing. The theragnostic approach, that allows the diagnosis and treatment of different neoplasms with the same ligand, is a typical nuclear medicine tool. Applied for years, is also pivotal in neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) where it has improved the diagnostic accuracy and the therapeutic efficacy with impact on patient's survival. Theragnostic also allows the identification of important prognostic factors such as tumor location and burden, presence of liver metastases and intensity of somatostatin receptors (SSTR) expression to consider in new and possibly combined studies to ameliorate patient's outcome. Moreover, the possibility to evaluate receptor expression even in non-NET malignancies has de facto widened the possible indications for PRRT. We believe that this innovative therapeutic approach will be implemented in next years by radiomics and biological tumors characterization to better address PRRT applications.