Radionuclides Production for Theranostic Applications

The use of High Specific Activity Radionuclides HSARNs, obtained by either proton, deuteron or alpha cyclotron irradiation, followed by selective radiochemical separation from the irradiated target in No Carrier Added (NCA) form, is a powerful analytical tool for plenty applications in pure and applied sciences and technologies. The main applications of these RNs are in medical radiodiagnostics and metabolic radiotherapy in addition to toxicological, environmental and industrial studies. Nowadays the new challenge in Nuclear Medicine is the so called theranostic medicine, a relatively novel paradigm that involves specific individual ‘dual-purpose’ radionuclides or radionuclide pairs with emissions that are suitable for both imaging, therapy and monitor the response to therapy. The theranostic radionuclides would potentially bring us closer to the age-long dream of personalized medicine. A subchapter is the multifunctional nanoplatform that is an emerging highlight in nanomedicine, in which a suitable radionuclide is encapsulated in nanocarriers. Many of the “neutron-rich” radionuclides suitable for metabolic radiotherapy are produced by nuclear reactor with a very low specific activity (AS). In selected cases, they can be produced by bombardment of targets by charged particle beams in NCA with very high AS. If the irradiations are made with deuteron beams some more advantages are obtained as reported, as an example, for 186gRe production.