CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that the University of Missouri is the only location producing the radioisotope terbium-161 as a radiopharmaceutical. This version has been updated to state that MU is one of the only locations producing this radiopharmaceutical.
New innovation with the potential to kill cancer cells is on its way — and the University of Missouri is the one of the only locations producing it.
MU researchers and professors Carolyn Anderson and Heather Hennkens are pioneering research on the radioisotope terbium-161 to be used as a radiopharmaceutical. Therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals are radioactive drugs that target tumor cells. Their emissions can kill cancer, especially the microscopic cancer cells seen in metastatic disease that has spread throughout the body.
“And some cancers, you can't even see they're so small like you can't pick them up with a typical imaging way like CT or MRI,” Anderson said. “But these radiopharmaceuticals that specifically target something that's on that cancer cell, they'll find them whether you can see them or not.”
Anderson focuses more on the back end of the research, where her team is currently testing terbium-161 on mouse models of cancer and determining whether the isotope hit the tumor or not. Hennkens works on the front end, actually developing the isotope itself at the MU Research Reactor.
“So my group's job is to produce it, to purify it, and to do some of the quality control assessments to assess the quality of our product,” Hennkens said. “And then we hand a portion of that product off to Carolyn and her team.”
MURR is the most powerful university research reactor in the United States, which is why this isotope is only being produced at MU.
The goal of the research, which has officially been occurring since 2019, is to have these radiopharmaceuticals available to hospitals and pharmacies to treat cancer. There is not yet an official timeline for release, but Hennkens says if it was possible she would want to release the product immediately.
“Can we start right now?” Hennkens said. “Yesterday if possible, but it takes some time.”
Hennkens says that so far she has sent small amounts of terbium 161 to a collaborating research partner at the University of Wisconsin, and hopes to continue this distribution on a larger scale in order to eventually have the isotope available at the bedside in hospitals.
“It really opens up the opportunity for additional research to occur so that we can more quickly learn about the promise of this radioisotope for nuclear medicine applications,” Hennkens said.
A large part of Anderson’s research involves comparing terbium-161 to another radioisotope, lutetium-177 which is currently in some FDA-approved products. She says that one of her predominant goals with this research is to see if terbium-161 performs better in a radiopharmaceutical.
“We can swap out the isotope. Everything else would be identical except for the isotope,” Anderson said.
Anderson said she hopes that MU becomes a site for clinical trials for this product in the future.
Hennkens said her ultimate goal is for the product to help cancer patients.
“[We hope] their lives are extended or saved. I mean, that's the ultimate goal,” Hennkens says.
