Radium-223 is highly effective for treating bone metastases in patients with castration-resistant prostate cancers. Despite the therapeutic potential of radium-223, its current formulation approved by the Food and Drug Administration is effective only for patients with bone metastases. Justin J. Wilson, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, does research to discover ways to deliver radium-223 to patients with soft-tissue cancers, as well. He wants to broaden radium-223's theraputic utility for a wide range of cancers.

"An ideal chelating agent is required to keep radium-223 stably bound during the time that it is circulating in patients," Cornell Research explains. "In collaboration with John Babich, Radiology at Weill Cornell Medicine, Wilson is evaluating the efficacy of new chelating agents developed in his lab for stably binding and retaining radium-223 in vivo."

Read the story on the Cornell Research website.