Letter from the President

Jolanta Kunikowska

Dear EANM family,

Dear colleagues and friends,

The past two years have been challenging for all of us due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the recent political situation in Ukraine also did not bring an optimistic start to the year.

Please note that the EANM expresses its solidarity with Ukraine and condemns the ongoing war threatening peace and stability within Europe as well as the safety and security of nuclear facilities. Additionally, the Russian Society of Nuclear Medicine (RSNM) has been temporarily suspended as a National Society within the EANM.

Even though the situation is difficult and unpredictable, we will be continuing with our duties. For this reason, let me start by giving you an overview of the top priorities:

One of the most important ones is strategy. As you probably remember, in the autumn of last year, the whole Board met and discussed the future of nuclear medicine. We defined our short-, medium- and long-term strategic goals, which also included the EANM’s involvement in EU-related initiatives and projects.

As the EANM is involved in EU-related initiatives and projects have been significantly increasing in recent years due to requests from external sources, we see it as the most urgent topic. Activities are based on years of informal policy work through personal contacts of previous EANM Board members and key members of our community. These activities have now been prioritised by the Board and will be strategically and structurally embedded in the EANM. As we see many opportunities there, we decided to establish a new EANM Policy & Regulatory Affairs Committee. This Committee will be in close cooperation with the Board, dealing with the strategic part of the work and advising the Board on EU-related matters. The first issue of a dedicated EU-related newsletter (the EANM Policy Bulletin) can be found here, but you may subscribe on the EANM’s website.

As mentioned last year, one of my priorities is fostering the increasing involvement of women in EANM activities. The EANM established the Women’s EmpoWErment Task Force last year, which is actively working. The Task Force prepared an analysis of results from a survey launched in November 2021, and an editorial on these results has been published too. Also, in March 2022, a virtual meeting with the Volunteers’ Pool took place. While the Task Force is looking for a new member as a replacement for one Mentoring Team member, the Volunteer’s Pool was also offered the possibility to apply for the EJNMMI’s reviewers’ pool or to become a member of the Editorial Board. This is an initiative in cooperation with the EJNMMI Editor in Chief.

Though the EANM Focus Meeting 4 on Molecular Imaging and Therapy in Haematological Tumours had to be cancelled due to the pandemic’s impact, we are delighted about the progress made. After two rounds of the Delphi process, a 90% agreement between the panellists was agreed on. The preliminary results were presented in the ESMIT webinar on March 18, 2022. Now, our experts can focus on the publication. Once again, thank you to Cristina Nanni, Carsten Kobe and all panellists for their efforts!

Also, joint efforts and exchanges with sister societies have been kept up. The latest example was the consensus meeting with EAU, which was held in January 2022, on the role of PSMA PET-CT in radioligand therapy ([¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-PSMA) in prostate cancer. After a very fruitful discussion, an agreement on a majority of questions was obtained. You may expect a publication resulting from this meeting very soon.

As PSMA is a really “hot topic” and an EMA registration of [¹⁷⁷Lu]Lu-PSMA is expected this year, we decided to dedicate Focus 5 to an update on prostate cancer. Please save the date for the EANM Focus Meeting 5 on Molecular Imaging and Theranostics in Prostate Cancer – the Future Begins Today on February 2-4, 2023, in Seville, Spain. We are looking forward to exciting exchanges on what has changed since the very first FOCUS meeting on that topic in 2018.

Of course, we will continue our collaborations with our nuclear medicine partners SNMMI, ANZSNM and JSNM, and with clinical societies like ATA, ENETS, ESC, ESMO and ETA, only to mention a few.

Finally, I would like to thank all of our volunteer Committee members, National Delegates, Working Group members as well as Board members and the Executive Office for their hard work and support.

Yours,

Jolanta Kunikowska

EANM President 2021-2022