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Radioactive drugs emerge from the shadows to storm the market

Nature Biotechnology volume 36, pages 1125–1127 (2018)Cite this article

A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 18 January 2019

This article has been updated

Novartis is expanding its push into radiotherapeutics. In October, the drug giant struck a $2.1 billion deal to acquire Endocyte, the maker of a late-stage candidate for prostate cancer that combines the tissue-killing power of radiation with a small molecule that binds preferentially to tumor cells. And less than a year ago, Novartis paid $3.9 billion to get hold of Lutathera (lutetium Lu 177 dotatate), a first-in-class peptide-based radionuclide therapy and the first approved by the US regulators, by acquiring the French company Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA), based in Saint-Genis-Pouilly.

Experts in nuclear medicine see both these investments as validation for a therapeutic strategy that struggled for decades to move beyond radioactive iodine-131, a staple of thyroid cancer treatment since the 1940s. “It's been a long struggle,” says Jim Ballinger, a nuclear medicine researcher at King's College London. “It's good to see that some products have been successful and taken on by big pharma.”

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Change history

  • 18 December 2018

    In the version of this article initially published, the descriptions of Actinium Pharmaceuticals' Iomab-B and Nordic Nanovector's 177Lu-lilotomab satetraxetan (Betalutin) were reversed. Iomab-B uses iodine-131 to destroy the bone marrow ahead of stem cell transplantation and Betalutin directs lutetium-177 to CD45-expressing B cells in follicular lymphoma. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

  • 18 January 2019

    In the version of this article initially published, Betalutin was described as directing a radioisotope to CD45-expressing B cells; in fact, it directs it to CD37-expressing B cells. The error has been corrected in the HTML and PDF versions of the article.

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    Elie Dolgin

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Dolgin, E. Radioactive drugs emerge from the shadows to storm the market. Nat Biotechnol 36, 1125–1127 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt1218-1125

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