Overview of the First NRG-NCI Workshop on Dosimetry of Systemic Radiopharmaceutical Therapy (RPT)

Abstract

In 2018, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the NRG Oncology partnered for the first time to host a joint Workshop on Systemic Radiopharmaceutical Therapy (RPT) to specifically address issues and strategies of dosimetry for future clinical trials. The workshop focused on (1) current dosimetric approaches for clinical trials, (2) strategies under development that would provide optimal dose reporting, and (3) future desired/optimized approaches for the new and novel emerging radionuclides and carriers in development. In this proceedings, we review the main approaches that are applied clinically to calculate the absorbed dose: These include absorbed doses calculated over a variety of spatial scales including organ, suborgan, and voxel, all achievable within the Medical Internal Radiation Dose (MIRD) schema (S-value) can be calculated with analytic methods or Monte Carlo methods, the latter in most circumstances. This proceeding will also contrast currently available methods and tools with those used in the past, to propose a pathway whereby dosimetry helps the field by optimizing the biological effect of the treatment and trial design in the drug approval process to reduce financial and logistical costs. We will also discuss the dosimetric equivalent of biomarkers to help bring a precision medicine approach to RPT implementation-when merited by evidence collected during early-phase trial investigations. Advances in the methodology and related tools have made dosimetry the optimum biomarker for RPT.