Theranosticsin nuclear medicine and oncology

Nowadays, the incidence of tumors is constantly growing, affecting older patients who are frequently exhibiting comorbidities. The occurrence of side effects may represent a problem for treatment compliance of patients. In order to manage this challenge, improving patient selection, reducing adverse events and enhancing therapeutic efficacy are mandatory.The field of Nuclear Medicine provides an opportunity to perform a personalized treatment by means of the theranostic approach.The revolutionary theranostic concept consists of administrating in different dosage the same molecule (labeled with different radioisotope), for diagnostic (using the beta+ or gamma-ray emission) and therapeutic (using alpha and beta- emission) procedures.Theranostic application are employed in several fields, for instance in differentiated thyroid cancer, neuroendocrine cancer and bone metastases treatment. In the future, aneffective management of oncological patients will require new efforts for the development of novel molecular targets for theranostic use.