What is Radioligand Therapy?
Radioligand therapy (RLT) is an innovative approach to cancer treatment that delivers radiation directly to tumour cells, regardless of where they are in the body.
It is a milestone development in cancer therapy that utilises effective tumour-targeting with therapeutic radioisotopes, with minimised impact to healthy tissues.
It currently treats neuroendocrine tumours and prostate cancer, but it has many promising future indications.
One of the greatest strengths of RLT is the concept of theragnostics which effectively combines diagnosis and treatment within the same therapy by using the same vector to localize the disease by PET-scan (diagnosis) and then hit the tumour with radiation capable of breaking the DNA of the target tumour cell (treatment).
Despite its great promise, this treatment option is a long way from being a mainstream cancer therapy in Europe. One of the main reasons is the lack of knowledge among healthcare professionals on the use and nuances of RLTs. Although RLTs fall under the nuclear medicine subfield, many nuclear medicine specialists in Europe still don’t possess a working knowledge of RLTs, because nuclear medicine has been traditionally focused on diagnostics rather than therapeutics. Making this knowledge gap worse in practice, effective therapy delivery for RLTs requires a strong multidisciplinary approach (i.e. the cooperation between nuclear medicine specialists, oncologists, radiologists, nurses etc.) which is often a challenging task for medical professionals to facilitate.
RLTs will become increasingly prevalent and available in the next few years, as such, there is an urgent need to prepare European healthcare professionals for their arrival. Because RLT is a method that can be used for the treatment of different tumour entities, which will certainly increase further in the coming years, an adaptive in-depth training in several areas like molecular imaging, RLT planning, RLT dosimetry and radiation protection is needed. Cancer patients will only be able to access this innovative treatment if the various medical specialists all have a tailored working knowledge on the use of RLTs.
For more information visit our article about the current landscape of RLTs in Europe.