Ponente
Descripción
Nuclear medicine and radiopharmacy are two disciplines that are making great strides in the development of new radiotracers. Theragnosis with radiopharmaceuticals represents a breakthrough in increasingly targeted cancer therapies. This concept involves diagnosis and treatment with two radionuclides of the same element or related molecules with different isotopes ensuring that what you image is what you treat.
Radioimmunotherapy is moving towards personalised medicine, with increasingly specific molecules for molecular imaging and treatment with alpha and beta-emitting radiopharmaceuticals.
Alpha emitters, such as Actinium-225 radiopharmaceuticals are being developed to improve therapeutic nuclear medicine. The production of this radioisotope presents a particular challenge for Targeted Alpha Therapy (TAT), a therapeutic strategy in oncology that combines alpha-emitting radionuclides with various targeting molecules to selectively treat different tumours.
Beta emitters have been very successful, such as Lutetium-177 radiopharmaceuticals, which have experienced an exponential boom in the last decade.
Lu-177 therapy was a breakthrough in the treatment of neuroendocrine tumours. [177Lu]177Lu-DOTA-TATE (with its homologous PET imaging molecule [68Ga]68Ga-DOTATOC) is already widely used in hospitals. Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men. A new radiopharmaceutical for the treatment of castration-resistant prostate cancer has recently been approved in Europe. It is [177Lu]177Lu-PSMA. Promising new clinical trials are opening up new treatment options for ovarian tumours using Lutetium-177 radioligands, and for other poor-prognosis cancers, which have an important tool in teragnosis.
Another challenge is to address the global shortage of Molybdenum-99, which is essential for diagnostic imaging with Technetium-99m , the production of which has been seriously affected by the ageing of nuclear reactors. The IFMIF-DONES neutron and deuteron source opens up a valuable line of research to advance in teragnosis, with the development of new radiopharmaceuticals and production of Mo-99, to help mitigate the global deficit.
This presentation is intended as an introduction to the challenges and opportunities in the field of nuclear medicine offered by a facility such as DONES.
