The Status and Prospects of Radiopharmaceutical Research for Targeted Radiotherapy in Taiwan

Received 11/16/2001; accepted 6/2/2002. For correspondence or reprints contact: Shyh-Jen Wang, M.D., Department of Nuclear Medicine, Taichung Veterans General Hospital, 160 Section 3, Taichung Harbor Road, Taichung 407, Taiwan, R.O.C., Tel: (886)4-23741349, Fax: (886)4-23741348, E-mail: [email protected] Therapeutic nuclear medicine has grown rapidly as a treatment modality in oncology in last decade. A variety of specific tumor-seeking radiopharmaceuticals have been commercialized for radiotherapy. However, most of these therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals are not applied to patients clinically in Taiwan because of difficulty in importing these drugs from other countries and their high expense. Therefore, the Institute of Nuclear Energy Research (INER) in Taiwan has been putting their efforts on developing these therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals and several kinds of therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals have been developed successfully in the past few years. Y-lipiodol, Re-lipiodol and Remicrosphere are developed for the therapy of hepatoma, Re-HEDP for metastatic bone pain and Re-sulfur colloid for malignant ascites. Pre-clinical studies of these radiopharmaceuticals are being carried out and clinical trials will be conducted soon.