A new study at Los Alamos National Laboratory and in collaboration with Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource greatly improves scientists' understanding of the element actinium. The insights could support innovation in creating new classes of anticancer drugs.

"The short half-life of actinium-225 offers opportunity for new alpha-emitting drugs to treat cancer, although very little has been known about actinium because all of its isotopes are radioactive and have short half-lives," said Maryline Ferrier, a Seaborg post-doctoral researcher on the Los Alamos team. "This makes it hard to handle large enough quantities of actinium to characterize its chemistry and bonding, which is critical for designing chelators."

The insights from this new study could provide the needed chemical information for researchers to develop ways to bind actinium so that it can be safely transported through the body to the tumor cell. "To build an appropriate biological delivery system for actinium, there is a clear need to better establish the chemical fundamentals for actinium," Ferrier said. "Using only a few micrograms (approximately the weight of one grain of sand) we were able to study actinium-containing compounds at the Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource and at Los Alamos, and to study actinium in various environments to understand its behavior in solution."

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-08-isotope-possibilities-cancer-treatment.html#jCp