CTE Sessions at EANM’16

EANM’16 – Mini Course III

October 16, 2016, 17:00 – 18:00
Updates in Radiopharmaceuticals for Radionuclide Therapy

Chairpersons: C. Pestean (Cluj), C. Terwinghe (Leuven)

J. Brilhante (Brussels):
Updates in Radiopharmaceuticals for Radionuclide Therapy: Radiolabelling of PRRT Radiopharmaceuticals in Small-scale Radiopharmacies and the Evolution of PRRT Radiopharmaceuticals
B. Vanbilloen (Leuven):
Updates in Radiopharmaceuticals for Radionuclide Therapy: Radiotherapeutics and Radiodiagnostics: Yin and Yang?

Educational objectives:

  1. Understand the principles of radionuclide therapy
  2. Overview currently available therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals
  3. Explain the specificity of the radioprotection for therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals
  4. Describe peptide receptor radionuclide therapy (PRRT) labelling and QC procedures
  5. Describe the correct calibration of the activity calibrator to ensure dispensing the required activities of the therapeutic radiopharmaceutical
  6. Overview the novel therapeutical radiopharmaceuticals in development


Since many decades, therapeutic nuclear medicine has been practiced for treatment of benign and malignant disorders. Nuclear medicine has been using radionuclides for therapy such as iodine-131, yttrium-90 and strontium- 89 for a long time.
In the last years there has been a significant growth of this specialism and several new radionuclides and radiopharmaceuticals appeared within the nuclear medicine departments for the treatment of metastatic bone pain, neuroendocrine and other tumours. These include amongst others 90Y-DOTATOC,177Lu-DOTATATE, 177Lu-PSMA and 223RaCl2.
The radiopharmacist and the technologist working at the radiopharmacy department play an important role, as many radiopharmaceuticals require on-site labelling. Labelling techniques of monoclonal antibodies and peptides have been introduced in daily radiopharmacy routine since some radionuclide treatments have shown benefit in clinical trials.
Handling beta and alpha-emitting radionuclides is challenging from a radioprotection perspective and also requires standardized measurement procedures to deliver the correct prescribed activity for the patient. (e.g. activity calibrator settings)
Future perspectives include new exciting therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals labelled with classical or novel radioisotopes and innovative vector molecules including novel peptides, monoclonal antibodies, antibody fragments, as well as properly designed clinical trials designed to prove clinical efficacy.

Key Words:

90Y, 223Ra, 177Lu, Radiopharmacy, Therapy, PRRT

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