ABSTRACT
This review discusses the production of alpha-particle-emitting radionuclides in radioimmunotherapy. Radioimmunotherapy labeled with alpha-particle is expected to be very useful for the treatment of monocellular cancer (e.g. leukemia) and micrometastasis at an early stage, residual tumor remained in tissues after chemotherapy and tumor resection, due to the high linear energy transfer (LET) and the short path length in biological tissue of alpha particle. Despite of the expected effectiveness of alpha-particle in radioimmunotherapy, its clinical research has not been activated by the several reasons, shortage of a suitable a-particle development and a reliable radionuclide production and supply system, appropriate antibody and chelator development. Among them, the establishment of radionuclide development and supply system is a key factor to make an alpha-immunotherapy more popular in clinical trial. Alpha-emitter can be produced by several methods, natural radionuclides, reactor irradiation, cyclotron irradiation, generator system and elution. Due to the sharply increasing demand of 213Bi, which is a most promising radionuclide in radioimmunotherapy and now has been produced with reactor, the cyclotron production system should be developed urgently to meet the demand.