• Question: How are radioisotopes used to battle cancer cells?

    Asked by lolandahalf to Clare, Mariana, Pedro, Robert, Susanne on 15 Nov 2012.
    • Photo: Robert Insall

      Robert Insall answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Radiation and chemotherapy do something very similar. They both damage cells that are dividing very fast. The radiation particularly hurts cells’ DNA, and cells that are dividing are particularly susceptible to having their DNA damaged.

      Thus cancer cells – which divide really fast – get killed much more than non-cancer cells – which don’t.

    • Photo: Susanne Muekusch

      Susanne Muekusch answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Hi lolandahalf,

      radioisotopes can be used at different stages of the battle:

      They are used for diagnostic purposes. The patient is injected a radioanuclide tracer that becomes enriched and trapped in cancer cells. The patients are scanned and the doctors can see in a whole body scan where the cancer cells are. This is important for cancers that spread to see how far and where it has spread already. This scanning technique is then used to monitor how the cancer reacts to treatment. If the treatment works, it should become smaller. The technique is called PET scan.

      For cancer treatment. One possibility is that patients are exposed just to the radiation, but the radioisotype is not taken up by the patient. This is the case for example in brain cancer. The second possibility is that the radioisotype is actually administered to the patient. This is the case for some thyroid gland cancers. The radiotherapy is locally applied, not the whole body is irradiated. THerefore it has less side effects than chemotherapy.

    • Photo: Clare Taylor

      Clare Taylor answered on 15 Nov 2012:

      Did you know that radiotherapy can be given to patients from either the inside or outside the body:

      Outside the body – using radioactive cobalt

      Inside the body – given by drinking a radioactive liquid that is taken up by cancer cells or by putting radioactive material into or right next to the tumour.

      The radioisotopes work in the way Robert describes.

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