The future of nuclear medicine: Russian doctors introduce the use of Rhenium – 188 into clinical practice

March 10, 2022 was a landmark event not only for the NMIC of Radiology, but also for the entire domestic healthcare. It was in our country that a radiopharmaceutical based on the radionuclide Rhenium – 188 (Re) was developed, manufactured and used in the radiosynvectomy procedure.

Within the walls of the branch of the NMIC of Radiology in Obninsk – MRSC named after A.F. Tsyba, a procedure of radiosynovectomy – radionuclide treatment of chronic knee synovitis – was performed within the framework of clinical studies. Joint diseases, including synovitis, are very common and often take a chronic form. The complexity of therapy lies in the fact that sometimes the disease becomes resistant to drugs.

This is exactly what happened to our patient Tatiana, who became the first person to take part in clinical trials of the new RFLP. Tatiana is 65 years old, for more than a year she was practically bedridden. Unbearable pain in the knee joint, constant therapy and painkillers no longer helped. According to Valery Krylov, head of the Department of radiosurgical treatment with open nuclides at the A.F. Tsyba MRSC, at least 5 thousand patients need such therapy only in our country.

Recall that the procedure of radiosynovectomy with RFLP is not new. So until 2000, it was performed using colloidal gold-198, but then it became unavailable in Russia due to the termination of funding. Over the past few years, the NMIC of Radiology of the Ministry of Health of Russia, in cooperation with the FMBA of Russia, has developed a fundamentally new and more advanced radiopharmaceutical based on human blood albumin microspheres with a diameter of 5-10 mm, labeled with radionuclide 188Re. The drug was named “MCA 5-10 microns, 188Re”, and has already successfully passed preclinical tests.

“Today, the issue of import substitution is more important than ever,” says Andrey Kaprin, Director General of the NMIC of Radiology, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences and RAO. – This radionuclide makes it possible to make a whole line of drugs that are very necessary for the treatment of various cohorts of patients, both with an oncological diagnosis and with other diseases. And developed jointly with JSC “SSC RF – FEI”, the only compact rhenium-188 generator in Russia, makes it possible in the future to replicate the method not only in the regions of our country, but also in the countries of the near and far abroad.”

The invention and introduction into clinical practice of new radiopharmaceuticals became possible thanks to the support of the Ministry of Health of Russia and the Government of Russia, which help Russian doctors and scientists in their development. “We have the opportunity to synthesize and produce drugs that will serve for the benefit of patients. And it is important that these are our Russian drugs that will be precisely targeted, precisely domestic and precisely guaranteed in production,” Andrey Kaprin stressed.

It should be noted that on March 10, 2022, the radiosynovectomy procedure was performed on another patient – a young man of 39 years old, who also suffers from the disease “knee synovitis”. Each operation took no more than 20 minutes and was performed under local anesthesia. Immediately after it, the patients underwent a study on a gamma camera, which showed a uniform distribution of RFLP in the cavity of the knee joint. “We see the presence of effusion and the distribution of our radiopharmaceutical in it, which will have a therapeutic effect,” said Mikhail Sigov, a doctor at the Department of Radionuclide diagnostics of the A.F. Tsyba MRSC. – The study on the gamma camera will be repeated to patients in 24 and 48 hours.” And on March 14, after control examinations, patients will be discharged from the hospital. At the moment, they are feeling well and expect a speedy recovery.

“Today is very important for us and is the result of many years of work carried out by doctors, scientists, specialists of our Center,” said Sergey Ivanov, Director of the MRSC named after A.F. Tsyba. – We have accumulated a lot of experience in the use of radionuclide drugs in diagnostics and therapy. And today, taking into account new developments, we expect that the drug will have a special therapeutic effect, and the method of radiosynovetomy itself will be extremely promising, both from a scientific and clinical point of view.”

Information for patients

If you have a chronic knee joint disease and you would like to undergo a radiosynovectomy procedure using Rhenium-188-based RFLP, please send your medical documents by mail contact@nmicr.ru marked “Radiosynovectomy”. Be sure to leave contact details.

If you are an oncological patient with concomitant metastatic liver damage, or you have a diagnosis of liver cancer and you want to apply for participation in clinical trials of a radiopharmaceutical based on Rhenium 188 – make an appointment with the specialists of our Center for Basic Cancer with the note “clinical trials of Rhenium-188”.

Press Service of the Federal State Budgetary Institution “NMIC of Radiology” of the Ministry of Health of Russia