Thomas Hope: Well, I would say there's two stories to the beginning of this meeting. The first story is I would say the long-standing collaboration between UCSF and UCLA, which started with the development of Gallium PSMA-11. The NDA is jointly submitted with the two institutions and then as well as the long-term support we've received from PCF. And that relationship really led to the development of this meeting. But the second story is we had some competitors down under who put on a really wonderful meeting. The prostate meeting at Peter Mac is a wonderful meeting, and I was invited to go down and give a talk at the first iteration of that meeting back in, I don't remember, 2022, 2021. And I thought it was a great conference and we needed something like that in North America. And so on coming back, we leveraged the relationships we had in the long-standing collaboration between PCF, UCLA and UCSF to put together this conference in the United States.
Phillip Koo: I'll speak on behalf of PCF when we say we're very proud to have supported a lot of the early work with PSMA and then to work with these prestigious institutions to bring a lot of this to a larger community is something that we are very, very honored to be a part of. Jeremie, I know you've been very, very active since the beginning and a lot of that development. Tell us what this meeting means to you.
Jeremie Calais: Yes. So thanks for having me and having us. Happy new year, everybody. We're very happy to have the opportunity to redo this great conference program, it will be the third time. We had a great return, the two prior editions. We have good industry support to put really a nice program together. And it's always a pleasure to work with UCSF, Dr. Hope, and PCF as well. So the aim is really to bring ... The first meeting was actually named PSMA Conference. And then of course we want to evolve and go beyond that. So the second meeting was PSMA & Beyond. This year is again, PSMA & Beyond, but as you know, the radioligand therapy field, the theranostics field is really moving beyond prostate cancer and PSMA only. So maybe next year or the upcoming years, we'll have another title for the conference. This year, we're going to talk about PSMA PET, of course. We're going to talk about PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy, of course. But we're going to present also what's coming next. As always, we'll have multidisciplinary great speakers from all over the world, international speakers. I will touch base on what are the main highlights I see this coming to the meeting.
Phillip Koo: I think that's wonderful how the meeting evolves as the field evolves, and it's really nice that you incorporate multiple different specialties, but also basic science, translational research on top of oftentimes just the clinical piece that we focus on. So Jeremie, I'll start with you. Tell us about some of those specific highlights that are included in this year's program that may not have been included in the past.
Jeremie Calais: So first, the dates. It'll be on the end of March, Thursday, Friday. Thursday, 26th. Friday, 27th. We'll have a first day talking about PSMA PET, optimizing the criteria, the response, how do we use SPECTs? We'll talk about clinical trial updates. Just earlier in the year in the fall at ESMO, there were a lot of very interesting clinical trial results that were out there. And so I really need to digest furthermore these results. We'll talk about PSMAaddition, PEACE-3, PEACE-6, STAMPEDE-2, these trials are coming. We'll have all the investigators that are here with us to explain that. We'll talk about new ligands, new nuclides such as astatine, such as other alpha emitters, the raw market and materials as well, because I think it's also important to understand where these nuclides are coming from, and we'll have great speakers to talk about that for the rest of the program. I'll let Tom briefly describe it.
Thomas Hope: Well, I probably won't go into as much detail. But I think on the second day there's a lot of discussion about new radioligands coming through. But I think the session I'm probably most excited about is maybe less interesting sounding but really impactful, which is there's a session about using PSMA PET as a response biomarker in clinical trials. PCWG4 is about to be published hopefully in the coming weeks to a month. And we are fortunate enough to have a speaker from the FDA who is in the division of oncology, who's going to be able to comment on that and is in a session with Michael Morris to really help us move forward and think about how we're going to use PSMA PET in the setting of clinical trials. And I think that session in particular will be really exciting. And hopefully we can learn a lot both from the FDA and the academics in the room to understand how we should be using this new tool in trial design moving forward.
Phillip Koo: I think that's wonderful. There's been so much new data and development since last year, and it'll be nice to be able to talk about that in a group setting and a lot more to come. Tom, specifically outside of prostate, what really gets you excited?
Thomas Hope: Outside of prostate, what gets me excited in the setting? I think there's a bunch of new targets that are coming. And then actually what I'm going to specifically focus on, and maybe what I'm most interested to learn about here, it's within prostate cancer, but it's across all these, which is radiation sensitivity. We haven't really delved into how this stuff works. How do we kill cells? What is radiation sensitivity? And so we have some really interesting talks about radiation sensitivity, immune response and all that. How are we killing tumor cells? And I think that's a really interesting set of topics that hopefully we can bring to light in this conference and get some really great speakers focusing on.
Phillip Koo: That. Yeah, I agree. When I saw that topic, it really was very intriguing. And I think it's really a challenge for all of us to learn more about that because it really helps us understand and develop new applications and new uses for this technology. So Jeremie, from your perspective, what are some of the biggest unmet needs that remain in the theranostics field and your thoughts on how we address some of those areas?
Jeremie Calais: Well, there are multiple. We can improve the efficacy of this approach at every level. We can improve imaging criteria. Like it was just said, we can work on new targets. We're going to be talking about APC3, you got FAP, about DLL3. There may be other ways to use these targets with other targeted approach, ADC, BiTE, CAR-T. Maybe we can combine that with PSMA-targeted radioligand therapy. So combination will be, of course, one of the main topics of discussion during the meeting. And we'll be talking also about toxicity. I think we can further optimize the therapeutic index, maybe having a better tumor efficacy and still acceptable toxicity or vice versa. So we'll be talking about mostly kidney and bone marrow toxicity and all these considerations.
Phillip Koo: I think that's going to be vitally important. PSMAaddition, very exciting to see that data. But there's obviously going to be implications on toxicity in the long-term and whatnot. So Tom, similar question to you as well. What are some of those unmet needs and how do we address those moving forward?
Thomas Hope: Yeah, I mean, I'm going to reiterate on the toxicity. I think 2026 is going to be the year that RLT meets toxicity. As we move earlier in the course of treatment, the risks and the costs of toxicity start to increase more and more. There's going to be a handful of trials reading out this year earlier on that are going to have very important toxicity signals. And I think there's going to be a huge focus on renal toxicity in particular, but also bone marrow toxicity, trying to understand what really is the long-term injury and how we use this more safely upfront. And I don't know if that's an unmet need, but that's going to be a really important topic in the coming year as we start to try to juggle these treatments earlier in the course of disease. It's not just in prostate cancer. You have NETTER-2 going earlier, NETTER-3, maybe even earlier. These trials are moving into places where toxicity becomes a real concern. And so I think the coming calendar year, that to me is going to be the focus of nuclear medicine is going to be toxicity.
Phillip Koo: I think I speak on everyone when I say we're so excited about this meeting. It really shows how institutions working together, universities, foundations, whatnot can work together to really do some meaningful work. So kudos to everyone for putting this together. Jeremie, how do people go about registering for this meeting?
Jeremie Calais: Yes. So you can just look on Google PSMA & Beyond Conference. Right away, you will have the link for the website of the conference psma.conference.ucsf.edu. This will be also posted just below in the video texts.
Phillip Koo: Great. So I encourage everyone to go sign up. I know it's going to be a great meeting when it comes to content, and it's also going to be a lot of fun and a lot of social activities that will create great networking opportunities for all of us. So thank you both for joining us and congratulations.
Jeremie Calais: Thank you. See you there.
Thomas Hope: Yeah, looking forward to seeing everyone there. Hope you all come and attend.