Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 6, Issue 14, 2000

After years of pre-clinical and clinical testing monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) finally offer new therapeutic choices for patients with haematological and solid malignancies both as unconjugated antibody and as vectors to target radionuclides in radioimmunotherapy (RIT). In recent years some of the most exciting clinical data have come from the use of RIT in the treatment of lymphoma and haematological malignancies and it wo Read More

For targeted radionuclide therapy to succeed as a single modality treatment, schemes must be devised which will enable the deposition in malignant cells of sterilising doses of radiation. Until such methods have been perfected, it is necessary to combine targeted radiotherapy in a rational manner with conventional anti-cancer treatments. Several means of delivery of therapeutic radionuclides are being evaluated b Read More

Targeted radiotherapy or endoradiotherapy is an appealing approach to cancer treatment because of the potential for delivering curative doses of radiation to tumor while sparing normal tissues. Radionuclides that decay by the emission of a-particles such as the heavy halogen astatine-211 ( 211 At) offer the exciting prospect of combining cell-specific molecular targets with radiation having a range in tissue of only a few cell d Read More

Targeted radiotherapy using Auger electron-emitting pharmaceuticals offers both advantages and challenges compared to alternative alpha - or beta -emitting agents. The low energy Auger electrons deposit their energy within the target cell thereby minimizing collateral damage. To achieve this effect, however, the radiopharmaceutical must incorporate the appropriate radionuclide, be efficiently synthesized, and once admin Read More

Dosimetry in targeted radiotherapy (TR) uses different calculation methods, whose degree of refinement is closely conditioned by the particular objective sought.It is more generally performed to establish a correlation between the quantity of radiation delivered to a target and the biological damage observed or that can be reliably predicted.It can thus be used to optimise treatments and allow comparison of different therap Read More