Cutting edge cancer treatments set to be produced out of uranium

Precision treatments tackling the hardest-to-treat cancers set to be produced from hundreds of tonnes of reprocessed uranium from nuclear reactors

Tens of thousands of doses of cutting-edge cancer therapies, which could help save lives and tackle some of the hardest-to-treat forms of cancer, are set to be produced from hundreds of tonnes of reprocessed uranium, generated from historic processing of spent nuclear reactor fuel. This work is being made possible thanks to a landmark agreement between the cutting-edge biotech firm Bicycle Therapeutics, and the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, being announced today (Tuesday 16 December). Bicycle was co-founded by one of the luminaries of British science, Sir Greg Winter, who was honoured with the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2018.

Bicycle will use a groundbreaking process developed by United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory (UKNNL) to harvest the valuable medical isotope lead-212 from reprocessed uranium. A tiny amount of lead-212’s parent material – equivalent to a single drop of water in an Olympic-sized swimming pool – is extracted through a series of processes, and through radioactive decay. An even tinier amount of lead-212 is then taken for use in radiopharmaceuticals: a type of precision medicine that could help treat some of the cancers that conventional treatments struggle to tackle.