Could this advance in radionuclide therapy help late-stage cancer patients?

Improvements in treatment method deliver cancer-killing drugs to tumour cells while avoiding healthy tissue

Chinese university says the work amounts to a disruptive technology in nuclear medicine design

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Chinese researchers have been working on a breakthrough cancer treatment which targets tumour cells while leaving healthy tissue alone. Photo: Peking University

Published: 4:00pm, 24 May 2024Updated: 5:37pm, 24 May 2024

Improvements to a type of radiation therapy could offer hope to late-stage cancer patients, after Chinese scientists developed a treatment method that targets tumour cells while avoiding healthy tissue.

In a new study, researchers engineered radiopharmaceuticals to allow them to “irreversibly” bind radioactive molecules to target proteins in tumour cells. When used in radionuclide therapy, it means the molecules would kill the cancerous cells, and not the healthy ones.

“This powerful strategy will enable researchers and the pharmaceutical industry to develop tumour-targeting” drugs using various biological molecules, the researchers said in a paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature on Wednesday.

Peking University, whose researchers led the study along with researchers from Peking Union Medical Hospital, said in a statement the method was “a disruptive technology in nuclear medicine design and the diagnosis and treatment of tumours”.

The university said it was the first original research paper in the field of radionuclide therapy that Nature had published in nearly 50 years.

According to the paper, targeted radionuclide therapy has improved outcomes for cancer patients by delivering “potent radionuclides to tumours for localised irradiation”.

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