The Use of PSMA in Nuclear Medicine beyond Prostate Cancer

Dear Colleagues,

In recent decades, the growing popularity of prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) imaging for prostate cancer has resulted in the incidental discovery of abnormal uptakes associated with the presence of inflammatory, infectious, extra-prostatic neoplastic, and dysmetabolic diseases.

As a result of these incidental findings, an increasing number of immunohistochemistry (IHC) studies and a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of expression of PSMA have been observed in several other normal tissues (such as renal tubules, salivary and lacrimal glands, small and large intestine, astrocytes, liver, spleen, thyroid, and synovial tissue), non-neoplastic conditions (infectious or inflammatory processes of bone-related conditions, benign diseases) and non-prostatic malignancies (salivary gland tumors, thyroid tumors, hepatocarcinoma, renal carcinomas, glioblastoma, breast tumors, lung tumors, gastric carcinoma, osteosarcoma, pancreatic cancer, gynecological malignancies, etc.).

Particularly in the oncology field, data from the literature have demonstrated that PSMA- and FDG-based imaging could play a complementary role in detecting the same phenomenon from multiple perspectives, providing molecular information on cancer biology with important consideration for radioligand therapy (RLT). Indeed, evidence of PSMA expression by a tumor would allow radioligand therapy to be used on the patient; thus, selected patients might benefit from a dual-tracer strategy.

This Special Issue aims to collect further scientific evidence on extra-prostatic tumors and benign pathologies that exhibit PSMA expression and can be studied with PSMA-based positron emission tomography (PET) as an additional or alternative tool to conventional imaging, with the aim of providing an overview of possible future applications of PSMA, both in diagnostic and theranostic settings.

In this Special Issue, we will collect case reports, original articles, and reviews focused on novel insights into PSMA-PET and therapy in oncological and non-oncological fields.

Dr. Virginia Liberini
Dr. Riccardo Laudicella
Guest Editors

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