President's Q4 2017 Newsletter

As 2018 is fast approaching with 2017 coming to an end, it is now my duty to summarize my presidency of WARMTH for the last two-year term. I am now looking forward to continuing serving WARMTH in the capacity of its Immediate Past President for the next two years. At this time, I repeatedly and greatly appreciate my predecessors who have provided excellent examples of leadership of WARMTH. I am excited to have been a part of such exciting teams and working with the exceptional people instrumental in directing WARMTH, and thus keeping my goal to maintaining our phenomenal success. 

As most of you know, one of my primary missions has been to continue to lead WARMTH in a position of prominence within the many international nuclear medicine societies, in particular the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging (SNMMI in the US), and helping our members to achieve their goals at an international level within the mainstream of nuclear medicine.  I have always welcomed and appreciated any suggestions or comments that any of you may have in this regard, so please do not hesitate to still contact me so that we work together to improve and maintaining the standing of WARMTH as an Association that serves as an umbrella for other nuclear medicine societies interested in all kinds of radiopharmaceutical therapies.

 

From my previous letters, you have probably known that this effort had begun starting with the 2011 SNMMI Annual meeting in Miami, Florida, when I, along with our Ajit Padhy and Patricia Bernal reached out to the SNMMI Leadership to propose some form of a sponsorship or collaboration, and keep the SNMMI informed with our scientific efforts. We have impressed them with our WARMTH goals, missions, and achievements, and thus persuading the SNMMI leadership for collaborations. 

 

Starting 2013 and 2014, we began to schedule a number of joint WARMTH-SNMMI CME (Continuing Medical Education) sessions, during both the Mid-Winter and the Annual meetings, which were quite a success. In particular, our Categorical Seminar on “Theragnostics’ in 2015 in Baltimore was unique and very successful. The meeting rooms have generally been full and for many of these sessions, We have been told that they were some of the best-attended sessions within the SNMMI meetings. These have been great beginnings for us in terms of the collaborations between WARMTH and SNMMI, and hopefully, they would surely increase and prevail. 

 

Supporting and reporting on WARMTH’s groundbreaking research advances over the years has underscored that this is an opportune time for a medical education curriculum and research for therapeutic medicine, so that physicians will become adept at using many of the novel methodologies we have developed to benefit their patients, and who better understand the unmet clinical needs and were inspired to design effective solutions. WARMTH’s pioneering work at the interface of the biological and physical sciences, to fulfill the life sciences and medical sciences, will strengthen and advance medicine, increase our value, and democratize health care delivery.  I thank you sincerely for all your diligent efforts in executing the missions of WARMTH, and hope to keep seeing you at the other events in the coming years.

 

During this year (2017), we had a number of stimulating occasions, including our participation in the SNMMI Mid-Winter meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, during the last week of January, as well as the Annual meeting of SNMMI that took place during June 10 -14 in Denver, Colorado. There, we participated in various sessions held and organized together by SNMMI Therapy Center of Excellence, Pediatric Imaging Council, Correlative Imaging Council, and WARMTH. In August the World Theragnostics Academy was held during the World Rhenium Congress  in Coimbatore, India. In addition, I was invited to represent WARMTH at a number of International Societies, including the Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine, Tokyo; Singapore NMU (Nuclear Medicine Update); AOCNMB in Yokohama as well as several others. I have been working with WARMTH to find a more permanent association within the SNMMI, with representation within the new SNMMI “Therapy Center of Excellence” as well, for which I feel very humbled and honored to have recently appointed and served as the President until now. 

 

Again, thanks to our President-Elect Irene Virgolini and her wonderful team, we had extremely successful 12th ICRT- in Vienna, Austria, during October 2017. She and her team worked very hard and did an absolutely superb job in organizing this Congress, in participation with the IAEA. For this, we also extend our sincere gratitude and thanks to Dr. Diana Paez of the IAEA, and her associates who provided us the Lecture Hall and all other facilities for the meeting and other functions. We also held the second of our Ajit Padhy Oration at this meeting, which was awarded to Professor Stanley Goldsmith of the Weill Cornell Medical School at New York. At this ICRT-2017, we had an outstanding local and international faculty and excellent attendance from participants from all over the world. For those of you who were not able to come we have posted many of the talks online.

 

In 2018 we will have several WARMTH events around the globe. The 13th ICRT will be held in Melbourne on April 20, 2018 at the World Federation of Nuclear Medicine and Biology World Congress. Dr. Harvey Turner is currently organizing the program which will posted online soon. We will also be collaborating with Prof. Kalevi Kairemo for an ISRT November 18-20, 2018 in Helsinki, Finland. 

As voted in Vienna, our 14th International Congress on Radiopharmaceutical Therapy will be held in August 2019 in Nanjing, China, with Prof. Weng Wang organizing the program. 

 

In addition, as usual, we will be continuing our collaboration and participation with other international Nuclear Medicine societies and organizations, such as WFNMB, AOFNMB, ARCCNM, AIPES and IRE, and others. I promoted continuing further discussions with the Governing Board Members of the International Societies and organizations, and continued to be active in this fashion for everybody’s mutual success. 

 

I encourage you, in as much as possible, to attend ICRT/ISRT and these other nuclear medicine meetings and symposia and thus maintain our global recognition and presence in the field of ‘Theragnostics’, the soul of targeted radiopharmaceutical therapy (TRT) that we have initiated and promoted. In addition, I recommend that your Young Investigators and students also attempt to attend, as and when possible. These all are exciting forums for young scientists to present their results, network, and interact with other fellow nuclear society members. I will make sure that the WARMTH leadership will continue its efforts, with your help, to set aside a separate “Educational Fund” in its coffers to support these activities. 

 

I have also continued to assure that as in the past, IAEA support continues to be offered for our ICRT meetings. We continued to work hard, with your help, to obtain sponsorship of as many industrial companies as possible to support us for our various endeavors, in particular for our yearly ICRT’s. In addition, we continued to attract additional WARMTH corporate members, who can support our specific needs for particular clinical projects, such as our ongoing Re-188 clinical trials, and others in the future.

 

As you know, we have gone totally electronic and have been constantly taking steps to improve our website with more interactive membership and payment opportunities, for our electronic elections, and for all kind of information and communications, etc., with the assistance of Mr. Josh Mailman (our Chief Operating Officer, who is a very competent IT specialist, and for everything else!). His help and commitment so far has been immeasurable, and we are now trying to find a future permanent “office” out of India, probably, under the name WARMTH International in USA. We are continuing to work on this important issue. We are a family and thus any help or suggestions from you, the members, will be highly appreciated.

 

Due to the retirement of Professor John Buscombe, new directions for our World Journal (WJNM) will continue to be implemented, with the help of our future Editor-in-Chief (Dr. Qaisar Hussain Siraj, M.D., Ph.D.) who at this time is being offered the position and will hopefully soon be appointed. More information on this and our other educational endeavors such as the WARMTH Theragnostic Academy (WTA), etc., will continue, and be announced from time to time.

 

With an ever increasing membership, presently approaching 500 members from 66 countries, I would like to again repeat what our Immediate Past President has repeatedly said, that we (desperately!) urge each of you to engage one single new member by the end of next year 2018. If we all do this, there is no reason for our membership not to leap to 1000 or more! 

 

Finally, thanks to all of you, this last year 2017 was a very successful year for our WARMTH. Although the coming years require us to face and resolve a number of difficult issues (more news in our future letters to you), I am sure that with the help of our new Governing Body, and all of you members, we will do very well again in the coming years.

 

Lastly, I would like to thank each and every one of you members for your continued support, and for your help in maintaining a very positive future and outlook for WARMTH. 

 

I, as well as our President-Elect Irene Virgolini and our Past President  Richard P. Baum, would like to take this opportunity to send to you all our WARM wishes for a very Happy Christmas, and a Healthy and Peaceful Year 2018! 

 

Warmest Regards, 

 

Prof. Dr. Suresh Srivastava	Prof. Dr. Irene Virgolini	Prof. Dr. Richard P. Baum
President, WARMTH	President-Elect, WARMTH	Immediate Past President, WARMTH