Drugmakers go nuclear, continuing push into radiopharmaceuticals

Elie Dolgin • June 10, 2021

With late-stage trial success, venture funding and next-generation alpha emitters on the way, targeted radiotherapy drugs are finally “getting the attention they deserve.”

The clinical success of the first targeted radiopharmaceutical designed to combat a common type of cancer looks poised to help bring the once-fringe treatment modality into the medical mainstream.


Earlier this month, Novartis reported phase 3 data from its VISION trial showing that men with metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer lived longer when, in addition to standard-of-care treatments, they received the company’s 177Lu-PSMA-617, a small-molecule drug that delivers radiation-emitting lutetium isotopes to cells expressing prostate-specific membrane antigen (PSMA).


Continue reading at Nature Biotechnology.

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