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Radioactive probes in medicine

Radio-pharmaceuticals can render pathological changes in tissue visible and can precisely destroy tumors.

Radiation therapy, the exposure of tumors to radiation produced outside the body, is among the most effective therapies against cancer. However, it often entails side-effects because healthy tissue is necessarily also impacted. “In contrast, radiopharmaceuticals, radioactively marked medications, enable internal radiation therapy that specifically destroys only the cancer cells,” explains Hans-Jürgen Wester, Professor for Pharmaceutical Radiochemistry at TUM. Together with his team, he develops “targeted radiotherapeutics”. These medications are injected into the patient and accumulate within the organism in the tumor cells. This focuses the effect of the radiation generated during radioactive decay and concentrates it on the tumor. Healthy tissue remains for the most part unaffected.

Diagnosis of diseases

Radiopharmaceuticals, also referred to as tracers, can also be used in the diagnosis of illnesses. “They function as a radioactive molecular probe which renders pathological processes visible,” says Wester. These medications generate radiation which is measurable outside of the body, making it possible to localize the illness using special tomography equipment and represent the spread of the illness in three-dimensional form. These methods have a major advantage: Since biochemical modifications in tissue often appear weeks or even months earlier than visible changes in tissue structures, they can provide information far beyond the possibilities of representations based on computer tomography (CT) or magnetic resonance tomography (MRT).

“Thus, only days after initiating chemotherapy, special radiopharmaceuticals can help determine whether the selected therapy will be effective for the patient or an alternative therapy should be chosen,” the TUM researcher adds. Particularly successful developments of the Chair of Pharmaceutical Radiochemistry include products for treatment and diagnosis of hematological diseases and prostate cancer.

Automatic production of radiopharmaceuticals

Radiopharmaceuticals are challenging in everyday clinical operations: They often have a shelf life of only a few hours because the short-lived radioisotopes they contain are quick to decay. Radiopharmaceuticals are thus difficult to store or transport over long distances. But with special equipment hospitals can produce the medications on-site and completely automatically.

Scintomics GmbH, founded by Wester in 2006, manufacturers this equipment at its facilities in Fürstenfeldbruck near Munich and supplies clients all across the globe. Together with colleagues at TUM and at the university hospital TUM Klinikum rechts der Isar, Wester developed the underlying tracer technologies, which have been continuously patented by TUM. The subsequent commercialization is based on an established worldwide network of customers and business partners. In the meantime two subsidiaries have also been founded with specific focus areas, driving progress in the clinical development of radio-pharmaceuticals.

Supporting entrepreneurship

As a particularly high-growth and sustainable company, Scintomics embodies the TUM philosophy as an entrepreneurial university and thus the company won the TUM Presidential Entrepreneurship Award in 2019. Based on his experience as a founding entrepreneur, Wester has also taken on the assignment of start-up ambassador for the TUM Department of Chemistry. “I very much look forward to informing anyone who is considering the founding of a company about the unique support for entrepreneurship available at TUM as well as the widely varied funding possibilities,” says Wester about his role.

More Information

Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Wester

Chair for Pharmaceutical Radiochemistry

TUM press release on the TUM Presidential Entrepreneurship Award

Scientomics

Support for start-ups: TUM supports students as well as scientists who want to found a company based on their ideas or technologies. TUM start-up consulting, provided jointly by TUM and UnternehmerTUM, the Center for Innovation and Business Creation at TUM, is the central instance for all questions relating to the topic of founding companies. The Patents and Licenses team handles everything relating to the topic of inventions.
 

Media Relations MSB

Dr. Paul Piwnicki
Media Relations Manager
Munich School of BioEngineering
Tel: 089 289 10808
Email: paul.piwnicki(at)tum.de

Scientific Contact

Prof. Dr. Hans-Jürgen Wester

Chair for Pharmaceutical Radiochemistry

Email: h.j.wester(at)tum.de