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Tomorrow’s Cure: How nuclear medicine helps cancer patients
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Nuclear medicine therapy is sometimes the best option for people who no longer respond to other cancer treatments. It is often helpful for patients with cancers that are historically hard to treat, like prostate cancer or lymphoma. On the latest episode of Tomorrow’s Cure, find out how nuclear medicine, when combined with other therapies, will control symptoms and shrink and stabilize tumors, sometimes for years.
This week’s podcast episode features Dr. Geoffrey Johnson, Chair of the Division of Nuclear Medicine and radiologist and nuclear medicine physician at Mayo Clinic; and Dr. George Sgouros, Director of Radiological Physics Division and Professor of Radiology and Radiological Science at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
"With chemotherapeutics, we never really know where these things are going. Are they targeting the cancer or where are they going?" Dr. Sgorous says. "[With] this new approach, we can generate images that tell us where the therapeutic agent is going, and it is no longer the black box that it has always been. That’s really a fundamental difference is this treatment."
"If we can give enough radiation safely to the tumors, we can kill anything," Dr. Johnson says. "We can go after any type of cancer with this type of therapy."
Both physicians are at the forefront of the nuclear medicine field, innovating to provide better cancer care. Dr. Johnson is hopeful about the future.
"Right now, we're treating patients who have failed everything," Dr. Johnson says. "So, we're asking right at the very beginning, 'Can we use these radiopharmaceutical therapies to stop the cancer before it spreads too far?'"
This innovative treatment is providing patients with more resources to fight cancer. To learn more, check out the latest episode of Tomorrow’s Cure wherever you get your podcasts. To learn more about Tomorrow's Cure and see a complete list of episodes and featured experts, visit tomorrowscure.com.
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