Strontium-89
A radioactive metal that behaves like calcium and is taken up by bone, particularly where cancer has spread there. A single injection can ease bone pain for weeks by irradiating those spots from within.
Overview
Strontium-89 chloride (Metastron) is a pure beta emitter, decaying by beta-minus emission with a physical half-life of 50.5 days and a single beta energy of 1.463 MeV (100% abundance), giving a maximum tissue range of roughly 8 mm. Because strontium chemically mimics calcium, it is taken up preferentially into bone at sites of increased osteoblastic activity, such as skeletal metastases, and is retained there far longer than in normal bone -- delivering a prolonged local dose from a single injection, used for palliation of painful bone metastases from prostate and breast cancer.
Unlike samarium-153 or radium-223, 89Sr emits essentially no useful gamma photon, so it cannot be imaged with a gamma camera; patient selection instead typically relies on a separate technetium-99m bone scan.
89Sr is produced by thermal-neutron irradiation of an enriched strontium-88 target, 88Sr(n,γ)89Sr, at the DOE's High Flux Isotope Reactor (Oak Ridge National Laboratory) among other sites, yielding radionuclidic purity above 99.8%. As a long-half-life, well-established reactor product, supply has generally been described by the DOE Isotope Program as steady.
- β− 1.463 MeV (100%)
Theranostic partners
- Technetium-99m · The single most widely used medical radioisotope: a metastable metal with a six-hour lifetime, milked on demand from a bedside generator (a 'moly cow') and attached to a cold kit to image bone, heart, kidneys or lymph nodes.
Quadramet (samarium-153 lexidronam) is a radioactive bone-seeking injection that lodges in bone metastases and irradiates them from inside, approved in 1997 to relieve pain from prostate, breast and other cancers spread to bone. Most patients get relief within one to two weeks, but marrow suppression follows at three to five weeks, and radium-223 and PSMA radioligands have largely replaced it.
A radioactive form of strontium is injected into a vein. Because it behaves like calcium, it collects in the damaged, overactive bone around cancer that has spread to bone, and its radiation can relieve bone pain for months.
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