The half-life is easy. The to-do list is the hard part.

Session 2 of Bracken's Radiopharma Roundtable paired a teaching talk from Ben Larimer with an open panel: Anna Pokorska-Bocci and Deepak Behera working through the strategic calls that decide whether an early radiopharmaceutical program succeeds, long before the isotope's clock starts ticking. Recorded September 16, 2026.

Session 2 panelists

Colin G. Miller, PhD Ben Larimer, PhD Anna Pokorska-Bocci, PhD Deepak Behera, MD

Strategic questions, organized in a deliberate order. Most teams begin with therapeutic vs. theranostic. This panel starts with why a diagnostic at all.

$2.6B / 5%

The cost of a late failure, and oncology’s odds of success. This is Ben Larimer’s case for using imaging to move failure earlier and cheaper.

CRO across imaging, dosimetry and clinical operations. Split vendors, according to the panel, are one of the field’s biggest operational blockers.

Join us for the next session Thursday, November 19, 2026 · Details to follow

What Session 2 surfaced

4 takeaways

Diagnostic first

Ben’s argument is to skip the therapeutic vs. theranostic framing and ask why you’d want a diagnostic at all. A good targeting molecule can enter a Phase 0 or Phase 1 imaging study on a lighter regulatory footing, and you learn whether it engages the target before any therapeutic dose goes in.

Design for dosimetry

Activity, mass, schedule, cycles. Deepak’s view is that dosimetry too often gets run as a retrospective analysis. Build it into the design using imaging, and Phase 2 and Phase 3 start from better dose rationale, where failure is most expensive.

Isotope follows the chemistry

DOTA is familiar and royalty-free, which is why it becomes the default. The panel argued for matching the imaging isotope to the therapeutic isotope’s chemistry first, even if that means a different chelator. The choice also decides your supply model, centralized or site by site.

Site and vendor fragmentation

Sites need radiochemistry, scanner access and dosimetry expertise, and all of it has to produce reproducible measurements. Vendor splits mirror that: physical supply on one side, CRO and data management on the other. Anna’s fix is a single CRO spanning imaging, dosimetry and clinical operations.

Voices from the table

In their own words

"The half-life is the easy part. It's fixed physics. The hard part is everything you have to do before the half-life clock even starts ticking."

Ben Larimer, PhD

LinkedIn ↗

"It's not simply how many sites are open, but how reliably can we treat patients safely and obtain the complete data that we need for the next decision."

Deepak Behera, MD

Profile ↗

"It's an important thing to discuss before you see the images, because then a decision has to be made."

Anna Pokorska-Bocci, PhD

LinkedIn ↗

Next session

Session 3 is November 19.

New panel, same format. Time and topic to come.