Jeremie Calais, MD, PhD, one of the architects of the U.S. radiopharmaceutical therapy program at the University of California, Los Angeles, has left after a decade and taken a professorship at Gustave Roussy near Paris, one of Europe’s leading cancer centers.
The move, Calais told AuntMinnie, was driven primarily by family (it is a return home for him and his wife) but it closes a chapter that reshaped nuclear medicine in the U.S.
During his 10 years at UCLA, Calais was part of the team that established prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA) PET imaging, working alongside German nuclear medicine researchers Wolfgang Fendler, MD, Matthias Eiber, MD, and Ken Herrmann, MD, who had come to UCLA to help launch initial PSMA studies. When they returned to Europe, Calais took over the program.
His team subsequently helped secure the first approval of a PSMA-PET imaging agent (gallium-68 PSMA-11), opened roughly 60 clinical trials across PET and radiopharmaceutical therapy indications, and established what he described as the first independent academic department of nuclear medicine in the U.S., separate from radiology.
At Gustave Roussy, Calais holds a three-part academic appointment involving clinical care, teaching, and research, with a primary focus on building a clinical trials portfolio in theranostics and radiopharmaceutical therapy. He noted one of the most significant structural differences he’s already found between the French and American research environments involves patient access to standard-of-care imaging and therapy during trials.
“I think the access to standard-of-care procedures such as FDG-PET or Pluvicto is excellent in France," he said. "Once it gets approved, the access is excellent to all patients, which wasn’t the case in the U.S. for multiple reimbursement issues."
Calais said he hopes to extend that advantage into a growing portfolio of trials, with expanding interest in alpha-emitting isotopes and targets beyond PSMA.
