PSMA PET and Radionuclide Therapy in Prostate Cancer

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the most common malignancy in men and a major cause of cancer death. Accurate imaging plays an important role in diagnosis, staging, restaging, detection of biochemical recurrence, and for therapy of patients with PCa. Because no effective treatment is available for advanced PCa, there is an urgent need to develop new and more effective therapeutic strategies. To optimize treatment outcome, especially in high-risk patients with PCa, therapy for PCa is moving rapidly toward personalization. Medical imaging, including positron emission tomography (PET)/computed tomography (CT), plays an important role in personalized medicine in oncology. In the recent years, much focus has been on prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) as a promising target for imaging and therapy with radionuclides, as it is upregulated in most PCa. In the prostate, one potential role for PSMA PET imaging is to help guide focal therapy. Several studies have shown great potential of PSMA PET/CT for initial staging, lymph node staging, and detection of recurrence of PCa, even at very low prostate-specific antigen values after primary therapy. Furthermore, studies have shown that PSMA PET/CT has a higher detection rate than choline PET/CT. Radiolabeled PSMA ligands for therapy show promise in several studies with metastatic PCa and is an area of active investigation. The “image and treat” strategy, with radiolabeled PSMA ligands, has the potential to improve the treatment outcome of patients with PCa and is paving the way for precision medicine in PCa. The aim of this review is to give an overview of recent advancement in PSMA PET and radionuclide therapy for PCa.