Radium of radium Curie used the residues after extraction of uranium from pitchblende. The uranium had been extracted by dissolution in sulfuric acid leaving radium sulfate, which is similar to barium sulfate but even less soluble in the residues. The residues also contained rather substantial amounts of barium sulfate which thus acted as a carrier for the radium sulfate. The first steps of the radium extraction process involved boiling with sodium hydroxide followed by hydrochloric acid treatment to remove as much as possible of other compounds. The remaining residue was then treated with sodium carbonate to convert the barium sulfate into
Radium-223 or foot. The most common abnormalities detected during blood testing were anemia, lymphocytopenia, leukopenia, thrombocytopenia and neutropenia. Although radium does not easily form stable molecular complexes, there has been presented data on methods to increase and customize its specificity for particular cancers by linking it to monoclonal antibodies, by enclosing the Ra in liposomes bearing the antibodies on their surface. Radium-223 Radium-223 (Ra-223, Ra) is an isotope of radium with an 11.4-day half-life, in contrast to the more common isotope radium-226, discovered by the Curies, which has a 1601-year half-life. The principal use of radium-223, as a radiopharmaceutical to treat