Q: What can SABCS attendees expect to learn from your presentation?

Q: Why is this an important topic in today’s world? How could this change the lives of attendees or their patients?  

A: ER status is a critical biomarker in patients with breast cancer, providing information on prognosis and selection of optimal treatments.  While biopsy has traditionally informed ER status, it is increasingly being recognized that heterogeneity of ER expression in tumors of a single patient may limit clinical care.  ER heterogeneity may be compounded by selection of tumor clones under pressure from targeted therapies.  The ability for Cerianna PET to provide a non-invasive, whole body assessment of ER status in individual patients can provide crucial information that may be available from a single or a few invasive biopsies.  Cerianna PET is currently the only modality to provide a whole body assessment of ER status, which may assist in making clinical decisions such as optimal treatments in patients with breast cancer.

Q: How did your personal or professional journey lead you to this topic?

A: We have long been interested in targeting imaging to help guide targeted therapy of patients with cancer.  Therapies that target the ER have brought about remarkable progress in managing patients with breast cancer.   The application of ER-targeted imaging with Cerianna PET has now allowed us to optimize the use of these exceptional therapies.

Q: What’s next in this field? What things related to this topic are you working toward or looking out for?

A: Cerianna PET has opened the door to ER-targeted imaging.  Next we need to properly define the clinical scenarios where whole body ER assessment with Cerianna PET leads to improvements in clinical care.  Future work may lead us to ER-targeted radioligand therapies, similar to how DOTATATE PET led to Lutathera treatment for patients with neuroendocrine tumors, and PSMA-targeted imaging is leading to approval of PSMA-targeted therapy for patients with prostate cancer.

Q: Why should SABCS attendees not miss this event?

A: This event is from two physician scientists, Dr Hannah Linden, a medical oncologist, and Dr Gary Ulaner, a molecular imager, who have both contributed to the development and clinical application of ER-targeted imaging for patients with breast cancer.  These physicians care for patients with recurrent or metastatic breast cancer and have expertise in the application of Cerianna PET.  They will discuss the mechanism of ER-targeted imaging, review clinical indications for this technology, and provide real world cases of how Cerianna can improve patient care.