Dr. Cho Receives WMIC Best Clinical Paper Award

Posted on September 2017

The World Molecular Imaging Congress has awarded Steve Y. Cho, MD, the 2017 Best Clinical Paper award for his paper published last year on a new PSMA-targeted PET radiotracer. The paper was published in Molecular Imaging and Biology and titled, “PSMA-Based [18F]DCFPyL PET/CT Is Superior to Conventional Imaging for Lesion Detection in Patients with Metastatic Prostate Cancer.”

Conventional imaging modalities such as CT and bone scan are limited in their detection of metastatic prostate cancer. This paper evaluates the ability of a novel second-generation (PSMA)-targeted PET radiotracer called [18F]DCFPyL in detecting metastatic prostate cancer. The study was conducted at Johns Hopkins University where Dr. Cho was a faculty member before his move to UW-Madison, with analysis done by Dr. Cho and his former resident, Dr. Steven Rowe, during Cho’s time at UW. The imaging agent 18F-DCFPyl was developed by Cho’s former mentor and colleague, Dr. Martin Pomper.

Dr. Cho’s study compared the findings of conventional imaging modalities and [18F]DCFPyL PET used in the same patients. The study shows strong preliminary evidence for the effectiveness of this particular radiotracer in detecting metastatic prostate cancer and speaks to the value of PSMA-targeted PET imaging for detecting prostate cancer.