A treatment called radioimmunotherapy (RIT) delivers specialized radioisotopes directly to tumors within a patient’s body by targeting cancer cells that express a distinctive antigen on their outer surfaces. Not all cancers produce such an antigen, and therefore not all cancers
 can be treated with RIT, but those that do include heavy hitters such as prostate cancer, colorectal cancer, melanoma (skin), leukemia (bone marrow), and non-Hodgkins lymphoma (blood).

Los Alamos scientists have obtained promising results in clinical trials with the isotope actinium-225, which delivers a rapid-fire quadruple burst of radiation and then becomes nonradioactive.

VIEW THIS ARTICLE