Question: How do radioactive atoms know which cells to target?

Sophia Pells answered on 12 Mar 2019:

This is a great question! The radioactive atoms themselves have no idea where they are going so will just kill any cells they get to which is so important to be able to image the radiation so we can check it goes to the right place. In order to use radioactive atoms for targeted cancer therapy, we need to attach them to a drug which is specifically designed to find and stick to cancer. The type of drug we need to use depends a lot on the type of cancer we want to target. One way it is done is using the fact that cancerous tumours take in a lot of glucose to be able to grow so quickly, so sometimes radioactive atoms are attached to a drug that acts like glucose. The tumours see the drug and think it’s glucose so they absorb it and get the dose of radiation instead.

My work relies very heavily on these drugs being effective at targeting tumours and not healthy parts of the body instead. There is loads of research into finding certain receptors that are found in tumours but not in healthy cells, so we can improve the drugs that track the cancer down and make sure the radiation only goes to the cancer.