From June 11-15, approximately 6,000 health care professionals converged on San Diego for the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI) annual meeting. That’s 1,000 more attendees than the show had in 2015. Of course, HealthCare Business News was right there, and what we saw was an event with a singular focus. For all the discussion of PET and SPECT imaging, logistical hurdles and regulatory updates, more than ever, this year’s show was entirely about the patients. The show began with a call to action, backed by a hefty incentive.

At the opening plenary session, the Michael J. Fox Foundation (MJFF) announced a $2 million prize for the researchers who discover a viable alpha-synuclein PET tracer, which could potentially play a key role in curing Parkinson’s disease. In an accompanying video, Fox told the crowd that although he was aware that money was not their motivation for helping to cure a disease that affects up to 1 million people in the U.S. alone, “it doesn’t hurt,” either. In fact, the prize is a “small expense” for the foundation’s total budget, but a “big step” toward finding a cure, Jamie Eberling, senior associate director of research programs at MJFF, told HCB News.

What’s tau got to do with it?
As one might expect, Alzheimer’s was another neurological topic of interest at SNMMI. While amyloid build-up has been central to those conversations in recent years, this time around it was tau that took the spotlight. A team of German researchers received the SNMMI Image of the Year Award for providing the first in vivo evidence of a correlation between amyloid, tau aggregation and metabolic activity in Alzheimer’s patients. They measured tau deposits using the novel radiotracer F-18-AV-1451 (F-18-T807), in conjunction with C-11-PiB, to measure amyloid plaques, and F-18-FDG to measure regional neurodegeneration.

“Adding tau imaging may help us now to understand factors leading to the actual onset of neurodegeneration and possibly also help document effective treatment,” Dr. Alexander Drzezga, professor and chair in nuclear medicine at the University of Cologne in Germany and one of the researchers, told HCB News The results suggest, according to Drzezga, that tau pathology could be tightly linked to neuronal dysfunction in Alzheimer’s disease, and might even be casually involved.

Government update on technetium-99m shortage
While PET imaging dominates academic journal headlines, SNMMI was about real-world utilization and improving care for everyday patients, and the vast majority of imaging exams performed today are with SPECT. An estimated 80 percent of the world’s nuclear medicine, or approximately 70,000 SPECT scans per day, are contingent upon access to technetium 99m (Tc-99m), and as the world’s nuclear reactors stagger closer to retirement, access to the tracer (via its parent isotope, molybdenum-99) has been a major concern for the molecular imaging community.

When the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s assistant director, Dr. Matt Heavner, Ph.D., addressed SNMMI attendees about what he considers to be tremendous progress in ensuring availability of the vital tracer, it was cause for some relief. According to Heavner, the U.S., which consumes roughly half the world’s supply of Mo-99, is strengthening its supplies and will not be in a crisis when Canada’s Chalk River reactor stops producing later this year.

Without offering specifics, Heavner also said that the Department of Energy’s commercial partners are expected to offer further production options in the coming months. The goal of those partnerships (such as those with SHINE Medical Technologies and NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes) is to pave the way toward a future where alternatives to weapons-grade highly enriched uranium can be used to produce the SPECT tracer.

Toward better serving patients
With the end of the meeting, SNMMI leadership changed hands. Just before being succeeded by Sally W. Schwarz, Dr. Hossein Jadvar took a moment to look back at the society’s three greatest accomplishments under his leadership:

• Establishment of a new SNMMI Therapy Center of Excellence to focus on issues related to targeted radionuclide therapy.
• Better defined training and credentialing pathways for physicians who seek to practice in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging.
• Continued work on SNMMI’s appropriate use criteria.

Over the course of the year, Jadvar visited 12 countries to promote global collaborations with molecular imaging practitioners worldwide. “No matter where I went, our colleagues overseas looked up to the SNMMI as the leader in the field,” Jadvar told HCB News. “We have to do the best we can to deliver on that expectation.”