# Rhenium-188

Source: https://nuclide.cc/isotopes/re-188/  
Nuclide record `re-188` (Isotope). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from Nuclide (nuclide.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

A high-energy radioactive metal that a hospital can produce on demand from a small on-site generator, similar to how a common medical imaging isotope is made, rather than needing to import it. It is used for hard-to-reach tumours, including liver cancer.

## Summary

Rhenium-188 is a high-energy beta emitter (maximum energies of 2.12 MeV, 71.1% abundance, and 1.96 MeV, 25.6%; mean beta energy around 763-784 keV) with a short 16.9-17.0 hour physical half-life and a co-emitted 155 keV gamma (about 15% abundance) that permits gamma-camera imaging, biodistribution and dosimetry studies -- chemically and logistically analogous to technetium-99m.

Its key practical feature is on-demand generator production: 188Re is eluted as carrier-free sodium perrhenate from a tungsten-188/rhenium-188 generator, in which the long-lived parent 188W (half-life 69.4 days) is fixed on an alumina column, much like a molybdenum-99/technetium-99m generator. A single generator can supply daily eluted doses for around six months to a year, making 188Re one of the few therapeutic isotopes that hospitals in resource-limited settings can access without importing short-lived material.

188W itself is made in a high-flux reactor by double neutron capture on enriched tungsten-186, 186W(n,γ)187W(n,γ)188W, at facilities such as the High Flux Isotope Reactor (Oak Ridge, USA), the SM-3 reactor (Russia) and BR2 (Belgium). 188Re-labelled agents (e.g. 188Re-HDD/lipiodol for hepatocellular carcinoma, 188Re-labelled bone and vascular agents) have been used mainly in investigator-led studies and in India and other countries where the generator route lowers cost, but none has reached FDA or EMA approval.

## Fields

- Kind: Isotope
- Status: phase-2
- Last checked: 2026-09-22
- Also known as: 188Re; Re-188
- Tags: therapy; beta emitter; gamma emitter; generator-produced

## Sources

- Rhenium-188 Production in Hospitals, by W-188/Re-188 Generator (PMC, 2013): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3638650/
- Fundamentals of Rhenium-188 Radiopharmaceutical Chemistry (Pharmaceutics, 2023): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9921938/
- Rhenium-188 Labeled Radiopharmaceuticals: Current Clinical Applications (Front Chem, 2019): https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6587137/

## Connected records

- indications: [Hepatocellular carcinoma](https://nuclide.cc/indications/hcc/)
- technologies: [Radionuclide generators and cold kits](https://nuclide.cc/technologies/radionuclide-generators-kits/)
- terms: [Bone metastases and skeletal-related events](https://nuclide.cc/terms/bone-metastases/)
- drugs: [Rhenium-188 skin cancer therapy](https://nuclide.cc/drugs/re-188-sct/)
- companies: [OncoBeta](https://nuclide.cc/companies/oncobeta/)

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