▲ The medical staff at the Theranostics Center of AMC Cancer Institute prepare radiopharmaceuticals for patient administration.

The Theranostics Center of AMC Cancer Institute will begin treating intractable metastatic cancer patients by introducing Pluvicto, an innovative prostate cancer treatment. Pluvicto is a next-generation targeted radiopharmaceutical developed by Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis. Its mechanism involves the radioactive isotope lutetium (177Lu), selectively binding to the prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA), which effectively destroys cancer cells.

Pluvicto treatment is based on a theranostics approach that combines diagnosis and therapy. First, a personalized PET/CT scan for prostate cancer is performed using a diagnostic radiopharmaceutical that selectively binds to PSMA. In November 2020, Asan Medical Center became the first in South Korea to produce and register ‘gallium (68Ga)-PSMA-11,’ a diagnostic pharmaceutical that can confirm PSMA expression in prostate cancer cells, as a hospital pharmacy formulation. Since then, Asan Medical Center has been actively applying personalized PET/CT scans for prostate cancer.

If PSMA overexpression is confirmed through PET/CT scanning, Pluvicto is administered for treatment. Pluvicto was approved by the U.S. FDA in 2022 and was officially approved for marketing in South Korea by the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety in May 2024. It is approved for prostate cancer patients who have failed to respond to androgen receptor pathway-inhibition therapy and taxane-based chemotherapy, offering a new treatment option for those who have failed existing cancer therapies.

Professor Dong Yun Lee of the Department of Nuclear Medicine said, “With the introduction of Pluvicto, we are expanding the scope of theranostics treatment, which has relatively few treatment side effects, to prostate cancer. We expect patients’ quality of life will be improved accordingly.”