Every year, up to 10 million people live in poverty. European patients use nuclear medicine imaging tools to diagnose various diseases. Nuclear medicine solutions using radioactive isotopes are of paramount importance in the fight against cancer at all stages of health care.
Egle Venslovaitė-Giedrė, the manager of Ambercell Solutions, participated in the first training program on the use of radioactive particles in interventional oncology organized by Terumo Europe , which aimed to get acquainted in more detail with the microspheres used in radioembolization procedures in the diagnosis and treatment of liver cancer.
Unlike systemic therapy, which affects the entire body, radioembolization is a local method of treatment, with the help of which the maximum radiation effect is concentrated in the tumor and the surrounding liver tissue.
To affect the tumor focus from the inside, isotopes that emit high radiation energy are used. In the method of treatment of nuclear medicine – radioembolization – the radioactive isotope of the holme (Ho 166) is used, which is provided in the form of polymeric microspheres (microgranules).
During a minimally invasive interventional procedure, the microspheres of the holmium are spread in the tumor tissue, and the beta radiation emitted by the isotope affects the biology of the tumor and promotes the death of tumor cells. The Holmium isotope has unique properties, such as additional low-energy gamma radiation and paramagnetic radiation, which make the isotope visible in diagnostic equipment. This allows you to plan the procedure with extreme accuracy and calculate the dose of individually prescribed radioactivity so that the treatment is as successful as possible and does not have serious side effects.
This training will help to better understand the physicochemical properties of the product, will provide practical knowledge of the preparation and use.
