Physical and Computational Chemistry

Radioactivity is deadly but it can be made deadly in a smart way. When selectively delivered to cancer with targeted molecules, it can efficiently kill cancer cells. The concept of targeted radiotherapy can utilize various radionuclides and is rapidly finding its way to clinical practice. However, the most potent alpha emitters 223Ra and 225Ac still elude this application because there are no suitable chelators for stable linkage of these radionuclides to targeting molecules. In this project we want to develop chelators for radium and actinium to allow this. Enabling stable chelation of  223Ra and 225Ac will have high impact on targeted radiotherapy of cancer.