Argonne Labs' accelerator provides a new cancer treatment approach.
Cancer is one of the most terrifying diseases most people can imagine.
However, no two cancer patients - even if they have the same cancer - will experience exactly the same situation.
Successful treatment requires an approach tailored to the specific nature of an individual's disease. The more personalized this therapy is, the more effective it is at killing cancer cells and protecting healthy tissue.
"Because Argonne has the unique facilities and expertise to enable us to produce these isotopes , the hospital has expressed interest." - Dave Roach, Argonne Associate Program Manager.
Medical isotopes, which are attached to cancer cells by chemical components (Argonne National Laboratory image)
One way to kill tumor cells is to use medical isotopes or radionuclides - radioactive atoms that can be directly at the tumor site Provides a high targeted dose. While not applicable to all cancers, targeted radionuclide therapy offers doctors a new anti-cancer weapon.
The use of radionuclides in medicine is nothing new: Every year, doctors perform more than 40 million medical procedures that rely on medical isotopes. However, most of these projects are currently diagnosing disease rather than treating it.
Producing radionuclides requires specialized facilities - they cannot just be made in a laboratory. For example, at the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory , high-power linear accelerators are used to produce these radioactive nuclides, requiring specialized radioactive facilities to decontaminate them. It has traditionally been used in physics experiments, but these accelerators have the ability to study and even create radionuclides for use by researchers and doctors.
How Medical Isotopes Work
Medical radionuclides can be divided into three categories. The first is diagnosis, where the radioisotope allows physicians to visualize the precise location and contours of tumors in vivo with greater clarity than that provided by MRI scans. The other is therapy, where doctors use radionuclides to deliver radiation doses directly to tumor cells. The third is therapeutic, which combines the best of both worlds so that radionuclides also allow doctors to visualize and treat tumors at the same time.
When newer generations containing medical isotopes or radiopharmaceuticals are added to medicines that selectively seek out cancer cells, or provide additional benefits in radiotherapy, these therapeutic isotopes will give physicians more options to combat disease, which will ultimately bring more hope to patients.
Argonne Laboratories has long-standing expertise in nuclear physics, nuclear chemistry, chemical separations and accelerator physics, both in providing the medical community with research and development protocols and the formulation of specialized processes for the specific radionuclide copper 67 positive results.
Argonne chemist Dave Roots, deputy program manager of Argonne's radioisotope program, said: "Copper-67 is a particularly valuable radioisotope, and we have ways to produce quantities that are useful to hospitals." Gong has unique facilities and expertise that allow us to produce these isotopes. "
Argonne scientists prepare to load a target into the lab's low-energy accelerator facility, which could help make medical isotopes
Argonne's key research role
Argonne's work on radioisotopes has received U.S. Department of Energy Isotope Program, a global leader in the production and distribution of radioactive and enriched stable isotopes deemed critical or in short supply.The U.S. Department of Energy's Isotope Program leverages the capabilities of national laboratories such as Argonne and enables them to develop advanced production and processing technologies to produce these much-needed isotopes.
In addition to this effort, The U.S. Department of EnergyThe National Nuclear Security Administration has also funded Argonne to support and accelerate U.S. production of another isotope, molybdenum-99. Argonne continues to provide targeted testing and development, irradiation and Monte Carlo computing services to multiple commercial partners to accelerate molybdenum-99 production. The lab also helps develop and optimize separation methods for these partners.
Argonne physicist and associate project manager Jerry Nolen said: "Argonne has a long history of showing that we can make important contributions to radioisotopes - initially in R&D but now also in the actual production of radioactive isotopes isotope.".
Argonne's Low Energy Accelerator Facility (LEAF) is a key facility for the production of radioisotopes. To make medical isotopes, LEAF shoots out a powerful beam of electrons, which it converts into gamma rays , high-energy photons or packets of light.
These gamma rays in turn hit a highly pure, stable target substance such as zinc-68. The resulting photonuclear reaction ejects one or more protons or neutrons that produce the desired radioisotope: copper-67 in this case.
Only a small fraction of the target substance will be converted to the isotope of interest, which means the target can be used over and over again.
"It's a bit like alchemy," says Roach. Essentially, by hitting a target with a photon, we convert one element into another, or one isotope into another. "
Copper-67 and other by-product isotopes are separated in gaseous form in a process that involves evaporating zinc in the target material and condensing it on the surface.Copper is then dissolved into solution and further purified by a process that allows the researchers to selectively isolate copper-67 (or whatever isotope they may want) based on chemical differences in the atoms present in the solution.
Argonne scientists work to purify copper-67, a medical isotope, for delivery to hospitals (Image via Argonne National Laboratory.)
The World of Medical Isotopes
Copper-67 isn't the only thing Argonne researchers are interested in of isotopes. Rotsch and his colleagues are also studying scandium-47 (another little-known isotope) and actinium-225, which have shown great promise in the treatment of cancer. "With most standard treatments, like chemotherapy , you don't know which drug or drugs will respond best to the patient, so sometimes this can become a guess-and-check game,"
Rotsch said.
Radiopharmaceuticals allow physicians to observe tumor uptake of radiopharmaceutical diagnostics. Based on these results, doctors can more effectively develop and prescribe a treatment plan and use therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals, Rotsch explained.
AI can also help doctors pair candidate radioisotopes with individual tumors. Using genetic maps of tumors in silico, researchers and medical professionals can simulate how radiopharmaceuticals attach to and attack tumors. Kawtar Hafidi, associate laboratory director for Argonne Physical Sciences and Engineering, said this will provide a good reference as to which treatments are most effective before they are implemented. "From accelerators to radiochemical separations, Argonne offers a unique set of facilities and expertise," says
Hafidi. "By integrating all of these resources, we can make a range of treatments more effective."", from Argonne's perspective, the ultimate goal is to build a comprehensive program that allows scientists to develop isotopes as fluidly as possible and create research avenues for new treatments that have not yet been conceived. "Who knows what other treatments are on the periodic table." waiting for us? ".
