Radioisotopes in Medical / Health Sciences

Nuclear medicine uses radiation to provide diagnostic information about the functioning of a person's specific organs, or to treat disease. Radiotherapy can be used to treat a wide range of medical conditions, especially cancer, using radiation to weaken or destroy particular targeted cells. Millions of nuclear medicine procedures are performed each year, and demand for radioisotopes is increasing rapidly.

Medical radioisotopes:

Radioisotopes use small amounts of radiation to provide information about a person's body and the functioning of specific organs, ongoing biological processes, or the disease state of a specific illness. In most cases, the information is used by physicians to make an accurate diagnosis of the patient's illness. In certain cases radiation can be used to treat diseased organs or tumours.

Nuclear imaging :

Nuclear imaging is a technique that uses radioisotopes that emit gamma rays from within the body. To make a radiopharmaceutical, a radioisotope is attached to a pharmaceutical that is taken up by a specific organ or specific diseased tissues. The radiopharmaceutical is given orally, injected or inhaled, and is detected by a gamma camera which is used to create a computer-enhanced image that can be viewed by the physician.

Radioisotopes are also widely used in scientific research, and are employed in a range of applications, from tracing the flow of contaminants in biological systems, to determining metabolic processes in animals and cell lines.

ANSTO Radiopharmaceuticals and Industrials (ARI) provide a range of radioisotopes for use in both the clinical and research setting. These include:

Radioisotope	Half-life	Use
Chromium - 51	27.7 days	Used to label red blood cells and quantify gastro-intestinal protein loss.
Gallium - 67	78.3 hours	Used to detect the presence and extent of Hodgkin's disease, lymphomas and bronchogenic carcinoma. Also used as an aid in detecting some acute inflammatory lesions
Iodine I - 123	13.2 hours	Used for Diagnostic scintigraphic localisation of phaeochromocytomas, paragangliomas (chemodectomas), ganglioneuroblastomas and ganglioneuromas. Detection, staging and follow-up on therapy of neuroblastomas
Iodine - 131	8.02 days	Used to diagnose and treat various diseases associated with the human thyroid.
Molybdenum - 99	66 hours	Used as the "parent" in a generator to produce technetium-99m, the most widely used radioisotope in nuclear medicine.
Samarium - 153	46.7 hours	Used to reduce the pain associated with bony metastases of primary tumours.
Technetium - 99m	6.01 hours	Used to image the brain, thyroid, lungs, liver, spleen, kidney, gall bladder, skeleton, blood pool, bone marrow, heart blood pool, salivary and lacrimal glands, and to detect infection.
Thallium - 201	73.1 hours	Used in myocardial perfusion imaging for the diagnosis and localisation of myocardial infarction. Also used in conjunction with exercise stress testing as an adjunct in the diagnosis of ischaemic heart disease (atherosclerotic coronary artery disease)
Yttrium - 90	64 hours	Used for liver cancer therapy.

ANSTO's Radiopharmaceutical Research Institute (RRI) offers fully developed R&D capabilities and expertise to enable pharmaceutical and biotechnology researchers to cut the time taken to develop and test therapeutics and diagnostics so their basic pharmacokinetics and bio-distributions may be obtained non-invasively at sub-pharmacologically active levels. RRI also assists with preclinical and clinical trial support with demonstrated scientific expertise and a prestigious track record. Click here for conact information.