Role of Nuclear Medicine in Cancer Therapy

Running head: Role of nuclear medicine in cancer therapy
Role of nuclear medicine in cancer therapy
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Role of nuclear medicine in cancer therapy
Introduction
Nuclear medicine is a multidisciplinary area in which instrumentation and tracers
(radiopharmaceuticals) are created and used to research physiological processes and to detect,
initiate, treat diseases without interference. This provides an exceptional way of studying in vivo
cancer biology and to improve cancer treatment for specific patients in particular. A tracer is a
radionuclide alone like iodine-131 or a radiolabel in a carrier molecule or 18F in the
fluorodeoxyglucose (18F-FDG), or another suitable radionuclide bound to a medication, protein
or peptide that accumulates within the tissue of interest when inside the body.
Some studies have performed dual tracer dynamic imaging in this study with staggered
18F Alfatide II and 18F-FDG injections for simultaneous angiogenesis and metabolism
observation, which serve as early sensitive markers of the tumor reaction therapy. With
compartmental modeling, the signal from each tracer was separated successfully. For single
tracer imaging, tumor absorption measurements and complex criteria for retrieved signals have
been confirmed. In order to monitor tumor response to chemotherapy, dual tracer images were
used. They found that dual-tracer single-scan imaging can be used to reflect tumor response and
more sensitive than static imaging is quantitative kinetic parameters calculated from dynamic
data.
Modern cancer therapy has shown its effectiveness in the treatment of patients with many
common cancers and improving their lives. This reduced success is partly due to the relative lack
of specificity in current medical practice for major classes of cancer and cytotoxic technologies.
The approach has been to destroy uncontrolled cell population for the majority of cancer

Role of nuclear medicine in cancer therapy
treatment approach accessible today (e.g. external radiotherapy, conventional chemotherapy).
This focus on non-specific cell division involves the frequently non-selective treatment that
rapidly divides non-tumor cells like those in the gut. Nonetheless, in recent years, targeted
treatments are emphasizing on destroying the cancer cells. Radiation therapy employs ionizing
radiation, for killing the cancer cells and decrease tumors by damaging the DNA of the cells,
thus avoiding the growth and division of these cells. Internal radiation therapy is the most
effective way to expose cancer patients to radiation. With that approach, a beam of high energy x
rays is irradiated to the major tumor only to a limited part of the body. The controlled medication
with radionuclides, by comparison, is like surgery because it is a preventive procedure. It
employs a radionuclide coded molecule for the delivery of radioactive radiation in places with
illness. Thus, the study aims at determining the role and effectiveness of nuclear medicine in
cancer therapy focusing on different aspect of nuclear medicines and approaches.