Abstract: Radiopharmaceutical therapy (RPT) is a relatively novel modality of radiotherapy for cancer, recently gaining popularity amongst radiation oncologists, nuclear medicine specialists, and medical physicists. RPT is a systemic therapy in which a given agent targets physiological processes or cancer-expressed biomolecules. This agent is composed of a ligand labeled with a radionuclide, which carries radioactivity to the tumor. In this talk, a brief introduction to RPT and its clinical uses will be given, highlighting the needs and challenges for RPT to become an optimized therapy in an individualized way. A review of the ongoing research projects carried out on RPT by the Physics Research group at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) will follow, separated into two categories: modeling the effect of radionuclides in a bottom-up way and modeling the biodistribution of radioactivity in different treatments.

About the speaker: Alejandro Bertolet is a medical physicist and researcher at the Division of Physics of the MGH. He currently holds the appointment of Instructor in Radiation Oncology at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bertolet received his Ph.D. from the University of Sevilla (Spain) while being a member of Carabe’s lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained his certification as a clinical medical physicist in Spain after a residency program at the Virgen Macarena Hospital in Sevilla. He is the current recipient of a K99/R00 award from the NIH/NCI, after which he has started leading the efforts of the Division of Physics at MGH in RPT research.