Radioligand Therapy (RLT)
Chairs: Matthias Preusser & Christophe Deroose
What are Radioligands?
A radioligand is a cancer treatment that couples a therapeutic radioactive isotope with a cancer specific cell-targeting molecule – the ligand. When a ligand binds to the cancer cell, its radioactivity is released in the cancer cell to selectively destroy them.
Discover the Task Force: Interview with Task Force Co-Leader Nathalie Albert
The primary objective of the Radioligand Task Force is to address the challenges in generating solid clinical evidence on the use of this promising field of anticancer treatment.
The task force aims to:
- Initiate and conduct clinical trials that lead to therapeutic advancements and even standard of care setting, with radioligands;
- Contribute to a more forward-thinking multidisciplinary, working if appropriate, with other disease-oriented groups to conduct transversal clinical trials;
- Improve access to clinical trials and therapeutic advancements for radioligands;
- Understanding and defining the landscape and other trial specificities connected to radioligand therapy;
- Enhance multidisciplinary collaboration and integrated research efforts, particularly by engaging, in a more sustained manner, with nuclear medicine physicians;
- Develop innovative methodologies and policies for more efficient clinical trial designs and treatment access;
The task force brings together a broad range of stakeholders, reflecting its multidisciplinarity, inclusive of nuclear medicine physicians, medical oncologists, radiation oncologists, imagers, epidemiologists and experts in quality of life research, as well as organ-oriented clinicians.
To achieve these objectives, the task force focuses on:
- Building networks: Strengthening collaborations across academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and patient organisations;
- Innovative research: Using radiopharmaceuticals to conduct clinical research with focus on the specificities connected to the different regulatory environments, production and distribution of drugs and availability of drugs and resources;
- Policy advocacy: Working with regulators, payers, and policymakers to address the unique needs of radioligand therapy, particularly in the context of hitherto hard-to-manage disease settings, with few therapeutic indications, representing particularly stark unmet clinical needs;
- Holistic overview: as most of these drugs are somewhat still in the early phase of development, there is a programme to think about the most appropriate candidates in terms of drug and clinical indications to move forward with research. Simultaneously, this can be used to implement, from the start, a complete radioligand environment, integrating aspects of end-user importance such as quality of life aspects, and clinical utility measurements, from early on in development.
