The CCRI News resource

Radiopharmaceutical therapy using alpha-emitting radionuclides such as 223Ra and 225Ac is proving to be highly effective in fighting several forms of cancer. The safe and effective use of these types of drugs relies on the ability to make accurate measurements of the amount of the drug, measured clinically as the amount of radioactivity, being administered to the patient. Because of the complicated decay characteristics and chemical properties of the radionuclides currently under clinical investigation, there are many hurdles to making traceable measurements of the radioactivity content in these types of drugs. To start addressing these issues, the CCRI Radionuclide Therapy and Quantitative Imaging Working Group recently organized an international workshop and webinar at the BIPM to bring together clinical practitioners, metrologists, and representatives from the manufacturing community to discuss measurement needs and potential solutions. The workshop was co-organized with the EURAMET AlphaMet project.

The two-day hybrid workshop was attended by 60 in-person attendees and 235 people worldwide who participated online, making it the most significant CCRI event to date in terms of attendance. A total of 25 invited talks were presented in person by internationally recognized experts in widely diverse areas such as radiopharmaceutical development, isotope production, clinical nuclear medicine, and radionuclide metrology to develop a common understanding of each field’s capabilities and where specific measurement problems exist. Some important topics discussed were clinical applications of targeted alpha therapy (TAT), production and availability of alpha-emitting nuclides relevant to nuclear medicine, dosimetry protocols for TAT, the need for primary and secondary standards for radioactivity measurement, and measurement traceability.   

A significant output of the workshop will be a paper describing the workshop that includes a set of recommendations for ways in which the metrology community can address measurement needs expressed by their clinical counterparts.