Radionuclides 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 of applications in pure and applied sciences and technologies. The main applications of these RNs are in medical radio-diagnostics 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 monitoring the response to therapy. The theranostic radionuclides would potentially bring us closer to the age-long dream of personalized medicine. Different radionuclides with the suitable characteristics to be used as theranostics can be produced by bombardment of targets by charged particle beams in No Carrier Added form with very high AS, with irradiations made with deuteron beams that present some more advantages. Recently there is an increasing interest in the terbium family, due to the four medically relevant radioisotopes 149Tb, 152Tb, 155Tb and 161Tb, which could be employed either in diagnostic or therapy. We present our results of the cross-section determination of nuclear reactions induced by deuterons on natDy targets.