Quick Facts about Isotopes in Canada
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The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission licenses the use and production of over 250 different isotopes in Canada.
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According to the Canadian Medical Imaging Inventory, there were 1,444,651 diagnostic imaging procedures in Canada during 2017.
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Canada has a long and successful history of developing novel radiopharmaceuticals, with a track record of 62 Health Canada approved radiopharmaceuticals.
The class of medication known as radiopharmaceutical drugs includes those containing a radioactive substance. These substances travel to predetermined targets where they can aid in illness detection and treatment. The following conditions can be diagnosed with radiopharmaceuticals:
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Bone disease
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Kidney and liver disease
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Brain diseases
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Cardiovascular and lung disease
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Some types of cancer, including thyroid, brain, and lymphoma
Additionally, radiopharmaceuticals can be used in therapeutic settings to treat a variety of ailments, most frequent malignant tumours.
Before Health Canada’s BGTD can consider approving the sale of a radiopharmaceutical medicine, a sponsor must amass sufficient scientific proof. The evidence must demonstrate that the radiopharmaceutical is:
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Safe
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Effective
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Of suitable quality
In Canada, radiopharmaceuticals are subject to regulations comparable to other medications. They must adhere to the same general submission guidelines and go through the same market authorization procedure. Due to their distinctive radioactive qualities, for which there are particular submission data requirements, radiopharmaceuticals stand out from other medications.
NEW FRONTIER
For many Canadians, the use of radiopharmaceuticals in healthcare may still be somewhat mysterious, but there is enormous therapeutic and economic promise in this field in our nation. Since Canada already leads the world in radioisotope-based medical technology, it has the potential to dominate the development of innovative treatments for patients.
Radiopharmaceuticals behave just like microscopic heat-seeking rockets and typically aim at specific regions of the ligand of interest. In brief, these are targeted radiotherapies. With essentially the same ligand, linker, and chelator being used while changing the radioisotope component of the medicine, theranostics, a promising new field, uses the combination of radiodiagnostic and radiotherapeutic substances to diagnose and treat diseases.
The benefit of radiopharmaceuticals over conventional medicines is that the radioactivity from the radioisotope enables non-invasive monitoring or focused therapeutic irradiation with very little impact on regular biological processes, leading to good safety records.
With the aid of radiodiagnostics, doctors can diagnose or stage diseases, see the biochemical activity of disease cells, decide which patients would respond best to a certain treatment, and keep track of a patient’s progress.
New radiopharmaceuticals are being developed to precisely target and kill cancer cells while sparing normal healthy tissues and quickly leaving the body, in contrast to chemotherapy, which applies radiation to the body non-selectively.
The target protein (a receptor, for example) does not need to be activated, inhibited, or regulated by the ligand, as a pharmaceutical agent alone would require, in order to cause a pathologic consequence, which is another benefit of radiopharmaceuticals beyond safety. Rather, the effectiveness of radiopharmaceuticals comes directly from radiation-induced damage and the subsequent killing of cancer cells.
THYROID BLOCKING
During treatment with radiopharmaceuticals, there may be radioisotopes that are disassociated from their carrier. These free isotopes can result in unwanted exposure to the thyroid gland. This is known to lead to significant damage and potentially thyroid cancer. Therefore, potassium iodide must be ingested for the purposes of thyroid blocking.
When a thyroid blocker such as potassium iodide is consumed, the thyroid gland becomes saturated with stable iodine. This prevents the accumulation of radioisotopes, specifically radioactive iodine, and minimizes the risk to the person receiving the radiopharmaceutical for diagnostic or treatment purposes.
Without
pretreatment
of stable iodines
Decrease/block of accumulation of
radioactive radiopharmaceuticals by pretreatment
