17 Jan Steve Cho looks to fine tune theranostics cancer treatments
Cho is a nuclear medicine specialist at UW Health | Carbone Cancer Center who treats patients with radioactive drugs that can seek out and destroy cancer cells. He is also an active researcher and part of Carbone Cancer Center’s growing work in theranostics. This field of nuclear medicine combines “therapy” and “diagnostics” and uses a dual approach of imaging technology and targeted therapies to identify and treat advanced stage cancers. These therapies focus on infusing a radioactive drug that is administered to both bind to the cancer target and deliver treatment right to it.
“Dating back to the 1930s and also under the “Atoms for Peace” program in the 1950s, people started to figure out how to use radioactivity, not to harm patients, but to be able to treat patients. [Theranostics] has been around for quite a bit of time, starting with radioactive iodine for thyroid cancer,” Cho said. “There’s really nothing new under the sun, it’s just a new term, although the technology has improved significantly.” Read more…