Heavy Metal Therapy: Realising the potential of ²¹²Pb targeted alpha therapies

Radionuclide therapies are sparking a revolution in nuclear medicine and are changing the way we treat cancer. But though there’s been success using lutetium-177, these therapies are not curative, and patients eventually relapse. Targeted alpha therapies are seen as the next evolution of radionuclide therapy - compared to they are more potent at killing cancel cells, but also more targeted, resulting in less unwanted damage.

One of the big challenges to bringing targeted alpha therapies into mainstream cancer treatment is manufacture of the isotopes themselves. Global production of therapeutic alpha isotopes is currently only enough to treat a few thousand patients a year which is nowhere near enough to take even one drug through clinical trials – let alone realise the promise of targeted alpha therapies for multiple cancers. AdvanCell was formed to solve this problem.

AdvanCell is a radiopharmaceutical company focused on the development and commercialisation of targeted alpha therapies. Since 202, they have developed a manufacturing platform capable of delivering scaled production of alpha isotopes and are using this to rapidly drive a pipeline of therapies through clinical trials to deliver on the significant promise of targeted alpha therapy. They chose lead-212 as the alpha isotope to use in this platform, based on its relative safety, its ability to fit into current systems, and the fact that the chemistry of lead is widely understood.

Across its facilities in Australia, AdvanCell is now making clinical scale lead-212 every day. At the same time they are working on a pipeline for therapies in therapies in prostate cancer, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, breast cancer, colorectal cancer and ovarian cancer, with their lead drug candidate now in Phase I/II clinical trial. AdvanCell are collaborating with Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, UCSF, UCLA and University Hospital Essen on research into the use of lead-212 as a targeted alpha therapy, with this work recently awarded a TACTICAL grant from the Prostate Cancer Foundation.

This is just the beginning – but with a technology solution that enables scaled production of alpha isotopes for therapy and ongoing clinical trials into a drug for prostate cancer, AdvanCell are offering a glimpse of the promise of lead-212 for the treatment of cancer. The team are committed to delivering targeted alpha therapies to every patient who needs it – something that could change the course of cancer therapy forever.