indications

Prostate cancer is the home of theranostics: PSMA PET finds it, PSMA radioligands treat it. Hormonal therapy remains the foundation, with PARP and AKT inhibitors added by genotype.

A family of usually slow-growing tumours that start in hormone-producing cells of the gut, pancreas and lungs. They pioneered the idea of using the same molecule to see a tumour on a scan and then to treat it with radiation.

Metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is disease that grows despite castrate testosterone. Sequenced treatments now include androgen receptor inhibitors, docetaxel and cabazitaxel, PARP inhibitors for men with BRCA-type mutations, the radioligand 177Lu-PSMA-617 and radium-223 for bone-predominant disease.

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumours arise from the hormone-producing islet cells of the pancreas and behave very differently from ordinary pancreatic cancer, often growing for years. Surgery cures localised tumours; advanced disease is treated in sequence with somatostatin analogues, lutetium-177 dotatate, targeted tablets and oral chemotherapy, and a minority secrete insulin or gastrin.

Small intestinal neuroendocrine tumours are slow-growing hormone-producing tumours of the ileum and jejunum, often found only after they have spread to lymph nodes and the liver. Monthly somatostatin analogue injections control symptoms and growth, lutetium-177 dotatate is the main second treatment, and everolimus, cabozantinib and surgery fill in.

Liver cancer almost always grows in a liver already damaged by hepatitis, alcohol or fatty liver disease. It is one of the most preventable cancers, and since 2020 immunotherapy combinations have roughly doubled how long people with advanced disease live.

The most common cause of dementia, in which sticky amyloid protein and tangled tau protein build up in the brain and damage memory and thinking over years.

Metastatic pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma is disease that has spread to bone, lymph nodes, liver or lungs, the only way these adrenaline-producing tumours are called malignant. It is often slow, so treatment starts with blood pressure control and watching, then moves through radioactive drugs that home to the tumour, the kinase inhibitor sunitinib, chemotherapy and, since 2025, belzutifan.

The cancer that kills more people than any other, and the reason most PET scanners are busy. Most cases are found once the disease has already spread, and a scan with radioactive sugar is what decides who can still be cured by surgery.

Pheochromocytomas and paragangliomas are tumours of adrenaline-producing tissue that cause dangerous blood pressure surges. Surgery after careful blood-pressure blockade cures most, genetic testing finds an inherited cause in nearly half, and for the minority that spread there are now radioactive drugs that home to the tumour and, since 2025, the first oral targeted pill, belzutifan.

Thyroid cancer is usually curable with surgery and radioactive iodine, the original theranostic. Rare aggressive forms respond to RET and BRAF inhibitors.

The arteries that feed the heart muscle narrow with fatty plaque, so parts of the heart can be starved of blood, especially during exercise or stress.

Kidney cancer is where anti-angiogenic drugs and immunotherapy came together, and where a Nobel-winning oxygen-sensing pathway yielded a drug, belzutifan.

Gliomas are now diagnosed by molecular class, and three classes got their first targeted drugs in 2024-25 (vorasidenib for IDH-mutant glioma, tovorafenib for BRAF-altered paediatric glioma, dordaviprone for H3 K27M). Glioblastoma itself is the hardest to treat and has kept the same standard since 2005; CAR-T delivered into the brain and focused-ultrasound drug delivery are the live directions.

Lung neuroendocrine tumours, called typical and atypical carcinoids, are slow-growing tumours of the airways that are usually cured by surgery. When they spread, everolimus is the one drug tested in a randomised trial for this site, cabozantinib was approved in 2025, and somatostatin analogues and lutetium radioligand therapy are borrowed from gut tumours.

Biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer is a rising PSA after surgery or radiotherapy with nothing yet visible on scans. Salvage radiotherapy can still cure it after surgery, and for a fast-doubling PSA the EMBARK trial showed that enzalutamide with or without hormone therapy delays spread.

Sarcoidosis is patches of inflammation that can form in the heart as well as the lungs and other organs, and it can trigger dangerous heart rhythms or heart failure. A PET scan that shows heart inflammation, paired with a separate scan of blood flow, helps find and track it.

Grade 3 well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumours divide fast enough to be called grade 3 yet still look and behave like their slower relatives rather than like neuroendocrine carcinoma. Recognised as separate since 2017, they keep the somatostatin receptor, respond less well to platinum chemotherapy, and in the NETTER-2 trial were among the first treated with lutetium-177 dotatate up front.

Metastatic hormone-sensitive prostate cancer is disease that has spread but still responds to lowering testosterone. Hormone therapy alone is no longer enough: adding an androgen receptor inhibitor, and docetaxel for high-volume disease, lengthens life by years.

The MEN syndromes are inherited faults in a single gene that cause tumours in several hormone glands over a lifetime. Because the gene can be found in childhood, at-risk relatives can be tested, watched and in MEN2 have the thyroid removed before cancer develops; and for MEN2 thyroid cancer that does spread there is now a precise pill, selpercatinib, that blocks the faulty RET protein.

For cancer that has spread widely to bone and causes pain everywhere at once, a bone-seeking radioactive injection travels to every affected spot in the skeleton and delivers pain-relieving radiation from the inside, sparing a trip to radiotherapy for each site.

Follicular lymphoma is the most common slow-growing lymphoma, defined in about 85% of cases by a BCL2 translocation. Most people live with it for decades, treated only when it causes problems; it can be controlled repeatedly with anti-CD20 antibodies, chemotherapy, bispecifics or CAR-T but rarely cured, and a small share transform into an aggressive lymphoma each year.

High-risk prostate cancer has Grade Group 4 or 5 disease, a PSA above 20 or a tumour growing beyond the gland. It is still curable, but needs radiotherapy with two to three years of hormone therapy, or surgery followed by radiotherapy, and adding abiraterone to hormone therapy now lengthens life in the highest-risk men.

Neuroendocrine prostate cancer is a form that has stopped depending on the androgen receptor, either from the start or after years of hormone therapy. It no longer shows up on PSA, spreads to the liver and brain, and is treated with the platinum chemotherapy used for small-cell lung cancer.

Osteosarcoma is the most common bone cancer, mostly in teenagers. Chemotherapy plus surgery cures about two-thirds when it has not spread; because no new drug has beaten that chemotherapy in a large trial in 30 years, the next gains are being sought in cellular therapy against GD2, HER2 and B7-H3.

An overactive thyroid gland makes too much thyroid hormone, speeding up the whole body. A drink or capsule of radioactive iodine can shrink and quieten the gland from the inside, without surgery.

HER2-positive breast cancer was once the most aggressive subtype and is now one of the most treatable, thanks to trastuzumab and, more recently, Enhertu.

High-risk neuroblastoma has spread widely in a child over 18 months old or carries extra copies of the MYCN gene. Treatment lasts about 18 months and uses every tool: chemotherapy, surgery, high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue, radiotherapy, and the anti-GD2 antibody dinutuximab, which raised survival in ANBL0032; eflornithine, given afterwards, was approved in 2023 to lower relapse.

Intermediate hepatocellular carcinoma is several tumours inside a working liver, too many to cut out but with no spread beyond it. The standard treatment for two decades has been chemoembolisation through the hepatic artery, and trials now show that adding immunotherapy and anti-angiogenic drugs to it delays progression.

Meningiomas grow from the membranes covering the brain and spinal cord rather than from the brain itself. Most are slow and benign and are either watched or removed; radiotherapy or radiosurgery treats what surgery cannot reach or what grows back, and no drug has yet been approved for them.

Neuroblastoma is a childhood nerve-cell cancer where anti-GD2 antibodies and, recently, GD2 CAR-T have improved survival in high-risk disease.

When a replacement hip or knee might be infected, doctors can label a small sample of the patient's own white blood cells with a radioactive tracer and watch, over a day, whether they gather around the implant the way they would around a real infection.

To check whether a blood clot has lodged in the lung's blood vessels, a scan compares which parts of the lung get air (ventilation) with which parts get blood flow (perfusion); a clot shows up as an area that is ventilated but not perfused.

A fast-growing lung cancer that responds to chemotherapy then relapses quickly. After 30 years without progress, T-cell engagers and ADCs are finally moving the needle.

A misfolded blood protein called transthyretin builds up as stiff deposits inside the heart muscle, making it thicken and stop relaxing properly. A bone-scanning tracer that also sticks to these deposits can diagnose it without a heart biopsy.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) is an aggressive but curable lymphoma. CAR-T cures about 40% of relapsed patients, and off-the-shelf bispecifics are now approved.

When a persistent fever has no obvious cause after the usual tests, a whole-body PET scan using the same sugar tracer as cancer imaging often lights up the hidden infection, inflammation or tumour behind it.

When a lump is found in the thyroid, a scan showing whether it takes up iodine-like tracer more or less than the rest of the gland tells doctors whether it is a low-risk overactive nodule that rarely needs a biopsy, or a quiet 'cold' nodule that does.

Hereditary pheochromocytoma and paraganglioma is the inherited form of these adrenaline-producing tumours, caused by a fault in one of more than a dozen genes, most often SDHB, SDHD, VHL and RET. Knowing the gene changes care: SDHB carriers have the highest risk of spread, VHL and MEN2 patients get adrenal-sparing surgery because tumours arise on both sides, and relatives are screened.

Non-metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer is a PSA that keeps rising on hormone therapy while scans still show nothing. Three androgen receptor blockers, apalutamide, enzalutamide and darolutamide, each delay metastasis by about two years and lengthen life, and darolutamide is the gentlest.

A group of movement disorders, including Parkinson's disease, that cause tremor, stiffness and slow movement because the brain loses nerve cells that make dopamine.

For seizures that medication cannot control, a brain PET scan taken between seizures can spot the small area of brain that is misfiring, by showing it using less sugar than the tissue around it, helping surgeons plan an operation to remove it.

Primary aldosteronism is a hormonal condition in which one or both adrenal glands make too much of a hormone that raises blood pressure. It is a common but badly under-diagnosed cause of hypertension, usually flagged by a blood test, and curable with surgery when only one gland is overactive.

Before removing lymph nodes to check whether a breast cancer or melanoma has spread, surgeons inject a small radioactive tracer that flows to the very first node the tumour would reach, so only that node needs to come out to find the answer.

Triple-negative breast cancer lacks the three commonest treatment targets, so hormone therapy and HER2 drugs do not work against it and treatment rests on chemotherapy, immunotherapy and antibody-drug conjugates. It is more aggressive than most breast cancer and harder to treat once it has spread.

The third commonest cancer in the world and the second biggest cancer killer. Most of it is curable if caught before it spreads, which is why so much of the imaging effort goes into finding out whether it has.

Cancer of the stomach or the junction where the gullet meets the stomach is common worldwide and still mostly found late, which is why survival is poor for most patients. Treatment now depends heavily on testing the tumour for a handful of markers that decide which targeted drugs and immunotherapies can be used.

When bleeding inside the gut is hard to pin down, labelling a patient's own red blood cells with a radioactive tracer and watching where blood leaks into the bowel over several hours can find the source, even if the bleeding comes and goes.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest common cancers because it is usually found only after it has already grown into nearby structures or spread elsewhere. Surgery can cure it, but scans before the operation often cannot tell whether the tumour is truly removable, so some patients are opened up only to find the cancer has already spread too far.

When a kidney's drainage tube might be blocked, injecting a tracer that the kidney filters out and watching, with a water pill on board, how fast it washes through shows whether there is a real blockage needing surgery or just a floppy but unobstructed system.

Urothelial cancer mostly starts in the bladder lining and ranges from tumours that stay superficial and are managed for years with local treatments to disease that spreads and needs systemic therapy. Survival depends heavily on how early it is caught, which is why so much attention goes into staging it accurately.