Therapy Center of Excellence Young Investigator Awards

Overview

SNMMI-sponsored symposium and competition, in association with the SNMMI Therapy Center of Excellence, for the best scientific abstracts on radiopharmaceutical therapy-related topics in nuclear medicine. The objective of this award session is to identify promising young investigators working on nuclear medicine therapy. These awards are made possible by a grant from the Education and Research Foundation (ERF).

• All applicants must be currently enrolled or within five (5) years of a completed certified training program.
• All former first prize winners are ineligible.
• The first author must also be the presenting author.
• All applicants must choose "Oral" as the Presentation Type.
• There is no age limit for consideration

Past Recipients

2025

• 1st Place Winner: David Kersting, MD, PhD - "Redifferentiation of Radioiodine-Refractory Thyroid Cancer following Genotype-Guided MAPK/BRAF Inhibition”
• 2nd Place Winner: Valentina Marulanda Corzo - “Single Time-Point SPECT/CT Dosimetry for 177Lu-PSMA targeted radionuclide therapy: Association with treatment response and PSMA-PET Biomarkers in mCRPC ”
• 3rd Place Winner: Gokce Belge Bilgin - “Outcomes of [177Lu] Lu-PSMA-617 Re-Treatment in Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer Patients:Single Center Experience”

2024

• 1^st Place Winner: Nicolai Mader, MD
  "Intensified therapy with 177Lu‐PSMA‐I&T in patients with high‐volume metastatic castration‐resistant prostate cancer”
• 2^nd Place Winner: Jill Moreau
  “Predicting 177Lu-DOTATATE SPECT Derived Red Marrow Dosimetry from Pretherapy 68Ga-DOTATATE PET and Baseline Biomarkers”

2023

• 1st Place Winner: Kim Pabst:
  "Fibroblast activation protein alpha (FAPα) directed imaging and radioligand therapy in patients with solitary fibrous tumor (SFT)"
• 2nd Place Winner: Sanjana Ballal:
  “Efficacy and safety of [177Lu]Lu-DOTAGA.FAPi dimer radionuclide therapy in patients with radioiodine resistant follicular cell-derived thyroid cancers"
• 3rd Place Winner: Julia Brosch-Lenz:
  "Can we use pre-therapy PSMA PET/CT as a predictor for Lutetium-177-PSMA-617 therapy? Early experience from the Canadian Cancer Trials Group PR21 trial (NCT 04663997)"

2022

• 1st Place Tie Winner: James Patrick Buteau
  "Time-savings analysis of total tumor burden quantification on 68Ga-PSMA-11 PET/CT with deep learning auto-segmentation of organs for automatic physiological uptake removal in men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer (mCRPC)"
• 1^st Place Tie Winner: Sanjana Ballal
  "First clinical experience on [177Lu]Lu-DOTAGA.(SA.FAPi)2 therapy in low SSTR expressing, FDG positive neuroendocrine tumours"
• 2nd Place Winner: Else Aalbersberg
  “The effect of long-acting somatostatin analogues on the uptake of [177Lu]Lu-HA-DOTATATE"
• 3rd Place Winner: Hendrik Ranthke
  "Clinical experience with 225Ac-PSMA-617 TAT provided on an individual patient basis: a retrospective single-center multi-ethnics analysis of 233 patients"

2021

• 1st Place Winner: Theresa P. Devasia
  "Progression and toxicity following liver Y90 radioembolization: impact of dose metrics, clinical factors, and biomarkers "
• 2nd Place Winner: Petra Lovrec, MD
  “Metastatic Disease Response and Patterns of Recurrence in Men with High-Risk Prostate Cancer after Neo-Adjuvant Chemohormonal Therapy and Radical Prostatectomy utilizing PSMA-Targeted 18F-DCFPyL PET/CT"
• 3rd Place Winner: Justus Baumgarten, MD
  "Safety and efficacy of radioligand therapy with 177lutetium-PSMA-617 within 3 months after 223Radium-dichloride"

2020

• 1st Place Winner: Edward O'Neill, PhD
  "A screen of 350 combination therapies with 177Lu-DOTATATE reveal distinct differences to EBRT and novel action of CDK4/6 inhibitors"
• 2nd Place Winner: Reinier Hernandez, PhD
  “Low-dose TRT reshapes the microenvironment of prostate tumors to potentiate response to immunotherapy"
• 3rd Place Winner: Diane S. Abou, PhD
  "Improving Efficiency of Radium-223 via Pharmacological Blockade of Gastrointestinal Uptake and Increase Bone Targeting"

2019

• 1st Place Winner: Sanjana Ballal
  "Early results of Ac-DOTATATE Targeted Alpha Therapy in Metastatic Gastroenteropancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors: First Clinical Experience on Safety and Efficacy"
• 2nd Place Winner: Andrei Gafita
  “Predictive value of interim PSMA PET during Lu-PSMA radioligand therapy for overall survival in patients with advanced prostate cancer"
• 3rd Place Winner: Frank Lin
  "Effects of amino acid co-infusion on increased catecholamine symptoms in metastatic pheochromocytoma patients treated with 177Lu-DOTATATE"

2017

• 1st Place Winner ($500): Mark H. Bryanton
  "Predicting lung cancer recurrence in patients within two years of curative radiotherapy via a trained machine learning algorithm"
• 2nd Place Winner ($300): Jazmin Schwartz
  “Kinetic Analysis of Simultaneous Dynamic PET Imaging of Dually Injected 18FMISO and 18FDG: a Proof of Principle"
• 3rd Place Winner ($200): Abhinav K. Jha
  "A no-gold-standard framework to evaluate FDG-PET tumor-segmentation methods on the task of measuring prognostic biomarkers for lung-cancer treatment"
• Honorable Mention – Kathy P. Willowson
  "Image based prognostic factors in predicting response to Y-90 SIRT"

2016

• 1st Place Winner ($500): Sarah Cheal
  “Curative theranostic pretargeted radioimmunotherapy (PRIT) of GPA33-expressing colorectal cancer (CRC) using a bispecific antibody with high affinity for GPA33 and DOTA (D) metal complex (DPRIT).”
• 2nd Place Winner ($300): Matthias Eiber
  “68Ga-PSMA HBED-CC PET/MRI in intermediate and high-risk prostate cancer improves the intraprostatic tumor localization compared to multiparametric MR."
• 3rd Place Winner ($200): Anne Segolene Cottereau
  “Baseline Metabolic Tumor Volume predicts outcome in patients with high tumor burden follicular lymphoma.”