GE HealthCare and BAMF Health, in Michigan, are cultivating a go-to-market approach that will accelerate awareness and adoption of theranostics as a clinical practice among U.S. providers, creating greater access to the dual diagnostic and therapeutic care regimen.

In theranostics, clinicians apply the same molecule or a pair of two different molecules to diagnose and treat patients for cancer consistently. In radiotheranostics, the same radionuclide or two different ones are used to image patients and then target and apply radiotherapy to eliminate the tumor based on the diagnostic data and without damaging healthy tissue. This creates a more personalized form of care. Examples of it include PLUVICTO (177Lu-PSMA-617) for prostate cancer and LUTATHERA (Lutetium Lu-177 dotatate) for neuroendocrine tumors.

Through their collaboration, GE HealthCare and BAMF Health will create a framework that bridges all phases of the theranostics care pathway, from drug development to disease diagnosis to treatment monitoring, and scale infrastructure and clinical solutions needed to make this care more accessible to patients. They also will form a network of partnerships with other providers and academic institutions in the U.S. and worldwide.
"Educating and collaborating between industry leaders, prestigious hospital systems, independent physician practices and academic medical institutions guides patients to our platform to receive lifesaving care that they might otherwise not know about or have access to. Educating patients and their caregivers on the benefits of using Theranostics for complex medical diagnoses is critical for its widespread adoption," Matt DeLong, Pharm.D., vice president of radiopharmacy at BAMF Health, told HCB News.

According to BAMF Health, the partnership will drive opportunities to apply theranostics to care outside of cancer, including for Alzheimer's disease.

But being able to do this requires access to advanced imaging technologies, building advanced infrastructure, data management systems, a platform for educating patients and caregivers, modern regulatory frameworks for radiopharmaceutical manufacturing and administering radioligand therapies, and best practices for materials management. These are all necessary for clinicians to identify patients who would benefit from this form of care and know the volume who require it, to optimize the manufacturing of diagnostic isotopes with short-lived half-lives.

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