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IMAGE: Katherine Shield (from left), Dahlia An, Tyler Bailey at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on Tuesday, November 17, 2020, in Berkeley, Calif. view more
Credit: Marilyn Sargent/Berkeley Lab
A promising approach to treating cancer - called targeted alpha-particle therapy or TAT - could better harness the curative power of radiation treatments and lessen the severity of their more debilitating side effects.
TAT recruits drugs containing radioactive materials called alpha-emitting radioisotopes or radionuclides combined with cell-targeting molecules like antibodies. As alpha-emitting radioisotopes decay, they emit radiation in the form of highly energetic particles called alpha particles. Cell-targeting antibodies guide these alpha-emitting radioisotopes, like super-tiny guided missiles, to their final destination: cancer cells.