Radiopharmaceuticals Division, Bhabha Atomic Research Centre, Trombay, Mumbai-400085, India.
Nucl Med Biol. 2013 Jan;40(1):23-32. doi: 10.1016/j.nucmedbio.2012.09.007. Epub 2012 Oct 30.
Nuclear medicine continues to represent one of the important modalities for cancer management. While diagnostic nuclear medicine for cancer management is fairly well established, therapeutic strategies using radionuclides are yet to be utilized to their full potential. Even if 1% of the patients undergoing diagnostic nuclear medicine procedures can benefit from subsequent nuclear therapeutic intervention, the radionuclide requirement for nuclear therapeutics would be expected to be in the multi-million Curie levels. Meeting the demand for such high levels of therapeutic radionuclides at an affordable price is an important task for the success of radionuclide therapy. Although different types of particle emitters (beta, alpha, Auger electron etc.) have been evaluated for treating a wide variety of diseases, the use of β⁻ emitting radionuclides is most feasible owing to their ease of production and availability. Several β⁻ emitting radionuclides have been successfully used to treat different kind of diseases. However, many of these radionuclides are not suitable to meet the projected demand owing to the non-availability with sufficiently high specific activity and adequate quantity because of high production costs, relatively short half-lives etc. This article describes the advantages and disadvantages for broader uses of some of the well known therapeutic radionuclides. In addition, radioisotopes which are expected to have the potential to meet the growing demand of therapeutic radionuclides are also discussed.
核医学仍然是癌症管理的重要手段之一。虽然癌症管理的诊断核医学已经相当成熟，但放射性核素治疗策略尚未充分发挥其潜力。即使只有 1%接受诊断核医学程序的患者可以从随后的核治疗干预中受益，核治疗所需的放射性核素预计也将达到数百万居里水平。以可承受的价格满足如此高剂量的治疗性放射性核素的需求，是放射性核素治疗成功的重要任务。虽然已经评估了不同类型的粒子发射器（β、α、俄歇电子等）来治疗各种疾病，但由于β⁻发射放射性核素易于生产和获得，因此最可行。已经有几种β⁻发射放射性核素成功用于治疗不同类型的疾病。然而，由于生产成本高、半衰期相对较短等原因，许多这些放射性核素由于其可用性不足且特异性不够高，以及数量不足，并不适合满足预期的需求。本文描述了一些知名治疗性放射性核素更广泛应用的优缺点。此外，还讨论了预计具有满足治疗性放射性核素不断增长需求潜力的放射性同位素。
