The premise is really simple: each episode the fantastic hosts Tim and Giannis invite one senior academic guest to discuss their favourite publication from the recent literature.
Pour yourself a nice glass of wine (we always record late in the evening) and join us as we delve into recent literature, and perhaps learn a little from the minds that have shaped the field.
We’ll find out what caught their eye, and why it is worth taking a closer look at this particular publication. Along the way, we will learn about their publication strategies and possibly even glimpse into the future of this amazing field of research.
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New episode is out 
Episode #17 – live from Tuscany:
Rodney Hicks, Melbourne
🎙️Tune in for a dynamic discussion on how NETTER-2 may reshape treatment strategies for neuroendocrine tumours, what it means for the wider field of theranostics, and where radioligand therapy is headed next.
For our seventeenth edition, we are at the stunning Certosa di Pontignano in Tuscany – the home of TOPIM, which focussed this year on Theranostics.
Suitably, we discuss one of the most important recent studies in the field of nuclear medicine and oncology — the NETTER-2 trial, published in The Lancet in 2024. This landmark phase 3 study was the first to investigate radioligand therapy as a first-line treatment in patients with advanced grade 2–3 gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours. The results showed a dramatic improvement in progression-free survival and response rates compared with high-dose octreotide, setting the stage for radioligand therapy as a potential new standard of care.
To guide us through this groundbreaking work, we are joined by a very special guest, Professor Rodney Hicks, a global leader in PET imaging and therapeutic nuclear medicine. Over the past three decades, Rod has been at the forefront of bringing molecular imaging and theranostics from the research lab into routine clinical practice. He has played a pivotal role in shaping how PET is used to diagnose, monitor, and now treat cancer, and his vision has helped establish theranostics as one of the most exciting frontiers in oncology today.
Selected publication:
About the Guest
Professor Rodney Hicks is Director of the Centre for Molecular Imaging and Therapeutic Nuclear Medicine at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Australia.
He has pioneered the use of PET and PET/CT in the assessment of cancer. His group has a strong focus on development of novel theranostic agents and translational research linking imaging phenotype to genotype. He is actively involved in the therapeutic nuclear medicine, especially for the treatment of neuroendocrine tumours and prostate cancer. Rod has published over 500 peer-reviewed articles and more than 20 book chapters and is Editor-in-Chief of Cancer Imaging and International Associate Editor of the Journal of Nuclear Medicine and Lancet Oncology. Read more about his work at Google scholar.
Check here for all podcast editions
About the Hosts
Tim Witney is a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and Reader in Molecular Imaging at King’s College London’s School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences. His Group’s research focuses on the development of next-generation imaging tools for cancer diagnosis, monitoring of therapeutic response, and detection of drug resistance. Tim has been serving as member of the ESMI Board since 2018, he served as its Secretary from 2023 to 2025, and was elected as Vice President in 2025.
Giannis Zacharakis is a Principal Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser – Foundation for Research and Technology (FORTH – IESL) in Heraklion, Crete and the Head of the Laboratory for Biophotonics and Molecular Imaging. Giannis was elected as ESMI Vice President in 2018 and served as President from 2019 to 2020.
About the music
- Andreas Jacobs – violin
- Jacob Niller – accordion
- Wolfgang Platen – contrabass
All of you who attended the EMIM 2021 in Göttingen certainly remember Andreas – one of the society’s founding fathers and past presidents – on stage playing the violin. Together with two young, talented musicians, he recorded Olecht Konflytt* again for the special occassion of becoming the “Dive into Imaging Science” theme – we could not be more grateful!
*composer: Guido Jäger “Olecht Konflytt”
LATEST Edition | August/2025
Guest: Rodney Hicks, Melbourne
Selected Publication:
¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-DOTA-TATE plus long-acting octreotide versus high‑dose long-acting octreotide for the treatment of newly diagnosed, advanced grade 2–3, well-differentiated, gastroenteropancreatic neuroendocrine tumours (NETTER-2): an open-label, randomised, phase 3 study.
Singh, Simron et al.The Lancet, Volume 403, Issue 10446, 2807 – 2817
All Guests & Editions
- #17: Rodney Hicks, Melbourne
- #16: Markita del Carpio Landry, UC Berkeley
- #15: Vasilis Ntziachristos, Munich
- #14: Peter J.H. Scott, Ann Arbor
- #13: Fabian Kiessling, Aachen
- #12: Elisa Konofagou, New York
- #11: John Ronald, London ON
- #10: Kevin Brindle, Cambridge
- #9: Mikhail Shapiro, Pasadena
- #8: Jason Lewis, New York
- #7: Annemie Van Der Linden, Antwerp
- #6: Elisabeth de Vries, Groningen
- #5: Bernd Pichler, Tübingen
- #4: Zaver Bhujwalla, Baltimore
- #3: Clemens WGM Lowik, Rotterdam
- #2: Simon Cherry, UC Davis
- #1: Jolanda de Vries, Nijmegen
- #0: Bertrand Tavitian, Paris