Publications by authors named "Russ A Kuker"

Background: Preliminary data suggest promising activity of loncastuximab tesirine in follicular lymphoma, and synergistic activity between rituximab-induced cytotoxicity and loncastuximab tesirine. In this study, we evaluated loncastuximab tesirine combined with rituximab for second-line and later treatment of follicular lymphoma.

Methods: We did a single-arm, investigator-initiated, phase 2 trial at Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in Miami, FL, USA.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Calciphylaxis is a rare but serious condition affecting patients with end-stage renal disease (ESRD), leading to poor outcomes due to calcium and phosphorus buildup in blood vessels and soft tissues.
  • Diagnosis can be made through skin biopsies or imaging techniques like X-ray and bone scintigraphy, emphasizing the significance of these methods.
  • This report discusses a case of a 30-year-old woman with calciphylaxis, pointing out the effectiveness of bone scintigraphy for diagnosis and the crucial role of organ transplant for adequate treatment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Radiation oncologists, radiopharmacists, nuclear medicine physicians, and medical oncologists have seen a renewed clinical interest in radiopharmaceuticals for the curative or the palliative treatment of cancer. To allow for the discovery and the clinical advancement of targeted radiopharmaceuticals, these stakeholders have reformed their trial efforts and remodeled their facilities to accommodate the obligations of a program centered upon radioactive investigational drug products. Now considered informally as drugs and not beam radiotherapy, radiopharmaceuticals can be more easily studied in the traditional clinical trial enterprise ranging from phase 0-I to phase III studies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Thyroid cancer, specifically differentiated thyroid carcinoma (DTC), is one of the most prevalent endocrine malignancies worldwide. Radioactive iodine therapy (RAIT) using I-131 has been a standard-of-care approach for DTC due to its ability to ablate remnant thyroid disease following surgery, thus reducing the risk of recurrence. It is also used for the treatment of iodine-avid metastases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Significant progress has occurred in developing quantitative PET/CT biomarkers in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). Total metabolic tumor volume (MTV) is the most extensively studied, enabling assessment of FDG-avid tumor burden associated with outcomes. However, prior studies evaluated the outcome of cytotoxic chemotherapy or chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy without data on recently approved FDA agents.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Maffucci's syndrome is a rare condition with fewer than 300 reported cases in the U.S., marked by the presence of multiple enchondromas and hemangiomas, and occasionally lymphangiomas.
  • - There's a risk of enchondromas becoming cancerous, specifically turning into chondrosarcomas, making regular monitoring essential for early detection.
  • - This report discusses our experience with a patient, highlighting the role of FDG PET/CT as a possible imaging tool for identifying malignant changes in Maffucci's syndrome.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The use of functional quantitative biomarkers extracted from routine PET-CT scans to characterize clinical responses in patients with lymphoma is gaining increased attention, and these biomarkers can outperform established clinical risk factors. Total metabolic tumour volume enables individualized estimation of survival outcomes in patients with lymphoma and has shown the potential to predict response to therapy suitable for  risk-adapted treatment approaches in clinical trials. The deployment of machine learning tools in molecular imaging research can assist in recognizing complex patterns and, with image classification, in tumour identification and segmentation of data from PET-CT scans.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Metabolic tumor volume (MTV) is a robust prognostic biomarker in diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL). The available semiautomatic software for calculating MTV requires manual input limiting its routine application in clinical research. Our objective was to develop a fully automated method (AM) for calculating MTV and to validate the method by comparing its results with those from two nuclear medicine (NM) readers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Tc-macroaggregated albumin (Tc-MAA) scintigraphy is utilized in treatment planning for Yttrium-90 (Y) Selective Internal Radiation Therapy (SIRT) of liver tumors to evaluate hepatopulmonary shunting by calculating the lung shunt fraction (LSF). The purpose of this study was to evaluate if LSF calculation using SPECT/CT instead of planar gamma camera imaging is more accurate and if this can potentially lead to more effective treatment planning of hepatic lesions while avoiding excessive pulmonary irradiation.

Results: LSF calculation was obtained using two different methodologies in 85 cases from consecutive patients intended to receive Y SIRT.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Identification of new prognostic factors in relapsed/refractory (rel/ref) diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is essential for developing risk-adapted approaches. We retrospectively analyzed prognostication based on metabolic tumor volume (MTV) in rel/ref DLBCL ( = 108) before platinum-based salvage chemotherapy. Using 41% SUVmax threshold, patients achieving complete response (CR) exhibited significantly lower baseline values of MTV, compared to those achieving partial response (PR) or with progression of disease (medians MTV 16.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Although whole body scan (WBS) with I-131 is a highly sensitive tool for detecting normal thyroid tissue and metastasis of differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC), it is not specific. Additional information, provided by single photon emission computed tomography combined with X-ray computed tomography (SPECT/CT) and by the serum thyroglobulin level, is extremely useful for the interpretation of findings. We report four cases of false positive WBS in patients with DTC: ovarian uptake corresponding to an endometrioma, scrotal uptake due to a spermatocele, rib-cage uptake due to an old fracture, and hepatic and renal uptake secondary to a granuloma and simple cyst, respectively.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Although radioactive iodine (RAI) imaging/therapy is one of the earliest applications of theranostics, there remain a number of unresolved clinical questions as to the optimization of diagnostic techniques/protocols and improvements in patient-specific treatment planning strategies. The objectives of this study were to determine the imaging characteristics and clinical feasibility of (124)I positron emission tomography/computed tomography (PET/CT) for the determination of extent of disease and evaluation of RAI kinetics in its physiologic and neoplastic distribution in patients with differentiated thyroid cancer (DTC).

Methods: The study was designed as a prospective phase II diagnostic trial of patients with confirmed DTC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: Injecting drug use (IDU) is a major risk factor for contracting HIV-1 infection. Both HIV and IDU are neurotoxic, and their coexistence may lead to increased dysfunction of brain metabolic processes. The objective of this research was to investigate the effects of HIV-1 infection and IDU on (18)F-FDG PET brain metabolism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Accurate determination of the extrahepatic extent and intrahepatic distribution of disease is very important in patients with primary and metastatic liver disease for deciding whether a patient receives potentially curable surgery or palliative treatment. Our objective was to evaluate the efficacy of delayed phase FDG-PET/CT imaging in lesion detection and to define its clinical impact compared to triple-phase contrast enhanced CT (CECT).

Methods: 30 patients underwent delayed phase FDG-PET/CT imaging (90 min whole body scan followed by a delayed abdominal scan at 120 min).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF