Dialogues

Jan 17, 2025, 09:44

ASCO24 Updates: Delphine Chen on Radiopharmaceutical Imaging and Therapy Innovations

The American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting is one of the largest and most prestigious conferences in the field of oncology. This year, the meeting took place from May 31 to June 4 in Chicago, Illinois. The event gathers oncologists, researchers, and healthcare professionals from around the world to discuss the latest advancements in cancer research, treatment, and patient care. Keynote sessions, research presentations, and panel discussions are typically part of the agenda, providing attendees with valuable insights into emerging trends and innovations in oncology.

This year, OncoDaily was at ASCO 2024 for the first time covering the meeting on-site. We had the pleasure of interviewing researchers who summarized the highlights of their work.

Hi, my name is Delphine Chen. I’m a nuclear medicine physician scientist and professor of radiology at the University of Washington and Fred Hutchins Cancer Center. I am the director of molecular imaging and therapy at the Fred Hutch Cancer Center and my clinical practice really encompasses all of cancer oncologic nuclear medicine.

My research has focused on the translation of novel chemical entities for studying pulmonary inflammation and cancer biology and currently we are leading a number of efforts to optimize the use of radiopharmaceutical therapies, radiopharmaceutical imaging, including PSMA PET, DOTATATE PET, and including therapies such as Lutetium-177 PSMA and Lutetium-177 DOTATATE.

Additionally, we are working towards trying to understand biological mechanisms with novel radiopharmaceutical imaging agents such as florthanatrase which targets PARP to understand PARP biology and identify ways we can better assess treatment responses to oncologic therapies.

Also, as a nuclear medicine physician, I am really thrilled to see the expansion of radioligand therapy and the development of nuclear medicine and targeted radiopharmaceutical therapies coming into the center of the oncology treatment space.

With the recent approvals of Lutetium-177 DOTATATE in 2018 and then Lutetium-177 PSMA in 2022, we’re really seeing highly effective radiopharmaceutical drug therapies for our cancer patients and we are seeing this growth in the field witnessed by the number of small companies developing novel radioligand therapies tied to molecular imaging techniques that can help us better select the patients who will best respond to these.

So I’m really excited to see how the field expands and really excited to be even more centrally involved in our oncology multidisciplinary groups and we will look forward to seeing what additional effective therapies we can bring to our patients.

More videos and content from ASCO 2024 on OncoDaily.