Nuclear medicine to-day and to-morrow

Nuclear medicine is a medical specialty involving the application of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. The origins of this idea date back to mid-1920s when George de Hevesy applied some radio nuclides to display metabolic pathways and coined the “radioisotope tracer” term. Discovery of artificially produced radioisotopes (including radioactive phosphor ³²P) made in 1934 by Irena and Frederic Joliot was a breakthrough. In 1936 John Lawrence (Ernst Lawrence’s brother) applied ³²P to a leukaemia-sick student. The decade of 1940s witnessed ever broader applications of radioisotopes, both in diagnostics and in therapy. That time Oak Ridge Laboratory in USA started to manufacture radioisotopes dedicated exclusively for nuclear medicine and the first paper on successful treatment of thyroid cancer with radioactive iodine was published (Sam Seidlin, 1946).

A rapid development of radioisotope-based medical procedures – in particular in oncology – has been observed in recent years. Such techniques have greatly helped to introduce molecular imaging methods to clinical practice. Various medical imaging techniques are nowadays used to assess selected metabolic processes, activity of receptor systems, or efficiency of transport mechanisms. Detailed characteristics of disease processes help to find effective treatment methods. Capability to image various processes means that the processes may be more efficiently monitored. As far as treatment methods are concerned, radioisotope-based procedures made possible to develop personalized medicine and the so-called theranostics. Progress in nuclear medicine results from achievements in numerous disciplines including biology, chemistry, pharmacology, physics, and medicine itself. That inter-disciplinary character of nuclear medicine determines its growth potential.