[en] Bicyclo[2.2.2] octane-2,3 diamine-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acids (BODTA) and bicyclo[2.2.1] heptane-2,3 diamine-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid (BHDTA) are chelating agents useful in forming detectably labeled bioconjugate compounds for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. New compounds and processes of forming BODTA and BHDTA are disclosed. Radioimmunoconjugates of the present invention show high and prolonged tumor uptake with low normal tissue uptakes

[en] In 1986 the National Board of Medical Specialties defined the specialty of nuclear medicine as a medical specialty that uses radioisotopes for prevention, diagnosis, therapy and medical research. Nowadays, treatment with radiopharmaceuticals has reached a major importance within of nuclear medicine. The ability to treat tumors with radiopharmaceutical, Radiation selective therapy has become a first line alternative. In this paper, the current situation of the different therapies that are sued in nuclear medicine, is reviewed. (Author)

[en] This article shows that radioimmunotherapy (RIT) was invented more than 30 years ago and at its beginning (between 1993 and 1997) results were quite modest: over a population of 300 patients and with all pathological indications being considered, the clinical effectiveness reached 2% of complete and partial responses and 3% of minor responses. The main cause of these poor results was the very large tumor burden in the majority of the patients which is now commonly recognized as not favorable for RIT efficiency. Consequently, in the clinical studies performed between 1997 and 2002, patients with smaller tumors were considered, higher activities were injected sometimes with stem cell rescue and, in a few studies RIT was associated with chemotherapy and especially with Taxol. The results of such studies, showed a significant clinical efficacy improvement. In the beginning of the 2000 years the situation of RIT has been rapidly progressing. Two radiolabeled antibodies (Bexxar and Zevalin) have been approved for the treatment of radiosensitive non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, thus illustrating the fact that RIT has come of age as a new therapeutic modality. Since then new technological approaches have been developed and clinically validated

No abstract available

[en] An ideal molecule to deliver radioimmunotherapy (RIT) would be target specific and have prolonged residence time at high concentrations in the tumour with rapid clearance from normal tissues. It would also be non-immunogenic. These features can be rationally introduced into recombinant antibody-based proteins using antibody engineering techniques. This reviews focuses on the use of antibody engineering in the design and development of RIT molecules which have single chain Fv (scFv) antibody fragments as building blocks

[en] Growth factor receptors are of great interest as molecular targets for the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Growth factor receptors are frequently over expressed on malignant cell populations since many cellular oncogenes encode either growth factors of their receptors. The wild-type epidermal growth factor receptor has a molecular weight of 170 kD and is over expressed on gliomas, bladder tumors, squamous cells carcinomas and breast carcinomas. Another growth factor oncogene, c-erb B-2, encodes a 185-kD glycoprotein found on the surface of gliomas, breast and ovarian cancers as well as other carcinomas of epithelial origin. In addition to causing over expression, oncogenic transformation also can result in genomic re-arrangements. An important example from the perspective of targeting is EGFRvIII, a deletion mutant which lacks amino acids 6-273 in the extracellular domain of the epiderma growth factor receptor. The EGFRvIII molecule (145 kD) may be of great value for targeting because it appears to be tumor-specific. Antibodies have been developed with specific reactivity with these growth factor receptors. Since these antibodies are internalized into the cell after receptor binding, it is necessary to use radiolabeling methods which residualize the radioactivity in the tumor cell after intracellular catabolism. To investigate this problem they have evaluated the effect of radioiodination method on the in vitro an in vivo properties of an anti-EGFRvIII antibody. Methods studied were Iodogen, tyramine-cellobiose, and N-succinimidyl 5-iodo-3-pyridine-carboxylate with the last offering optimal localization in a human xenograft model

[en] In radioimmunotherapy (RIT) monoclonal antibodies to cancer-associated antigens can be utilized for the transport of therapeutic radioisotopes to cancer cells. Intravenous administration of radiolabelled antibody is a potentially curative form of therapy in hematological amignancies as circulating antibodies have easy access to tumour sites. Intravenous RIT is less effective in the treatment of solid tumours because of the low fractional uptake of the injected dose, particularly in the central parts of tumours. In solid tumours more promising results have been achieved by local RIT applications. The choice of radiation - α, β or γ - will depend of the characteristics of the tumour. The importance of radiation delivered by Auger electrons has been largely underestimated in the past, but recent research has resulted in a remarkable reassessment of this issue significantly influencing the selection of radioisotopes for RIT. Research is now being focused on the therapeutic aspects of different isotopes and microdosimetric problems. There are now good prospects of RIT becoming an important form of cancer treatment before year 2000. (orig.) (78 refs., 3 figs., 1 tab.)

No abstract available

[en] The Workshop was organized in three main sessions: Basic Technologies, Medical Applications, Environmental Applications. The experiments of the INFN CSNV on the different topics have been presented, with particular regard to: the international framework; the scientific approach and the expected results; the highlights; the industrial application and future development. A round table on the future trends concluded the Workshop: in view of the future work of CSNV; new results and perspectives, both in medical and environmental field, were discussed to identify the main future streams and cross disciplinary applications. These proceedings collect the contributions presented during the Workshop

[en] In this work the biodistribution of radioimmunoconjugate ⁹0Y-DOTA-hR3 was modeled by using an artificial neural network. In vivo stability of ⁹0Y-DOTA-hR3 was determined in healthy male Wistar rats at 4, 24 and 48 hours, in different organs. A model describing the relationship between, by one hand, the incorporated dose and, by the other hand, organ and time was developed by using a multilayer perceptron neural network. Adjusted model was analyzed by several statistical tests. Outcomes shown that proposed neural model describes the relationship between the studied variables in a proper way. (Author)