THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEPARTMENT OF R ADIOLOGY
NEWS AND NOTES
SPRING 2025 ISSUE 13
Some members of the Nuclear Medicine Theranostics Team
U-M RADIOLOGY LEADS IN BREAKTHROUGH THERANOSTICS TREATMENT AND RESEARCH
IN THIS ISSUE Letter from the Chair . . . . . . 2 Fellows and Residents . . . . . 5 Histotripsy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Thanks to rapid expansion in the commercialization of diagnostic and therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals, U-M Radiology is part of an exciting new revolution in nuclear medicine known as “theranostics”. “The speed of this growth has been staggering,” said Peter J. H. Scott, Ph.D., Professor of Radiology and Director of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and the Cyclotron and Radiochemistry Facility. “We didn’t really have the infrastructure or people to do therapy clinical trials in the past as there was little demand. Now we’ve got hundreds of companies asking if we can host them here and we’re partnering with Rogel Cancer Center to put a dedicated Theranostics Clinical Trial team in place.” “Theranostics” is an amalgam of the words “therapy” and “diagnostics”. It refers to a type of personalized cancer treatment where a specialized diagnostic positron emission tomography (PET) scan determines the stage of the cancer, then the radioisotope is changed to a very similar molecule with a therapeutically useful radiation emission that can treat the cancer. “If we can see it on a PET scan, it means that on a molecular level the cancer has the receptor expression that we need to get the radioactive medication into the cancer cells and give radiation treatment,” said Ka Kit Wong, M.D., Professor and Director of the Nuclear Medicine Therapy Clinic. continued on page 3
Awards & Recognition . . . . . 8 Retirees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2024 New Faculty . . . . . . . . 20