To ensure that radiation therapy is as precise as possible, doctors need to know how the medication is distributed throughout the body. Researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) have developed a new approach to this end. It combines two imaging techniques and could make the treatment of advanced prostate cancer more precise in the future.
For some men with advanced prostate cancer, hormone therapy eventually stops working. In such cases, a treatment known as targeted alpha therapy can help. In this approach, radioactive molecules deliver radiation directly to cancer cells, destroying them from within. To plan the treatment as precisely as possible, doctors need to know in advance how much of the drug reaches the tumor and how long it remains there and in other organs.
Planning radiation therapy more individually
Experiments with human prostate cancer cells and mice showed that both variants reliably reached the tumor. Nevertheless, the team discovered a surprising difference: one of the two labels remained in the blood longer. Why this is the case is still unclear.
For the researchers, this is an important clue. Apparently, even very small changes can influence how a drug is distributed in the body. That is why they now want to investigate both methods more closely.
The results of the cell and animal experiments show that the new approach works in principle. If it becomes possible in the future to track more precisely how a drug is distributed in the body, the radiation dose can also be better tailored to individual patients. This would allow the tumor to be treated as effectively as possible while better sparing healthy tissue. As a next step, the Dresden research team plans to gradually develop the most promising compound for clinical trials.
Originalpublikation:
T. Krönke, M. Ullrich, M. K. Blei, K. Zarschler, J. Schädlich, S. A. Brühlmann, K. Kopka, J. Pietzsch, S. Stadlbauer, C. Mamat: Diagnostic Twins: Exploring the Radiohybrid Concept with Iodine-123 and Lanthanum-133 for PSMA-Targeted SPECT and PET Imaging, in Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, 2026.
