Anti-cancer radiopharmaceuticals

Therapeutic nuclear medicine is rapidly developing as an additional treatment modality in oncology. A great variety of specific tumor-seeking radiopharmaceuticals is applied both for diagnostic scintigraphy and treatment, using multiple routes and mechanisms to target radionuclides at tumors. After a brief introduction of some basic principles of radionuclide tumor targeting, the available anti-cancer radiopharmaceuticals, arranged according to the site of accumulation in relation to the cell nucleus, and the results of their current clinical use for therapy are reviewed. The observed response to a number of these applications, the non-invasiveness of the procedure and the relative lack of toxicity and late effects in comparison with chemotherapy and external beam radiotherapy, make radionuclide therapy an attractive and realistic alternative approach to cancer treatment.