Categories: Energy Stocks
Topics: Uranium Stocks

What Is Targeted Alpha-Particle Therapy?

You may not have heard of Targeted Alpha-Particle Therapy — or TAT — just yet! 

But its advanced applications in emerging cancer therapies may not only prove lifesaving for patients… but the rare and unique medical isotopes used in TAT may soon prove very, very lucrative to select uranium and rare earth mining companies that are able to recover these highly sought after elements.

TAT is a relatively new, highly-targeted approach to cancer treatment in humans. 

While chemotherapy is a ubiquitous cancer drug treatment administered throughout the entire body — typically intravenously — in an attempt to kill off cancer cells, the chemo drugs themselves are not able to differentiate between healthy cells and cancer cells.

That’s why the side effects from chemo can be so daunting and can include such things as severe fatigue, hair loss, infections, bruising and bleeding, and a whole host of other issues. 

TAT, on the other hand, utilizes intense light energy, or lasers, to send alpha particles — which release enormous amounts of energy over a very short distance — directly to the targeted tumor site via a process known as Linear Energy Transfer or LET.  

The radioactive isotopes — or radionuclides — used in TAT have an extremely short half-life… just long enough to provide a therapeutic dose to the patient but not long enough to cause undue damage to healthy tissue.

And while the therapy is still in its infancy, there is hope in the medical community, and among cancer patients worldwide, that TAT will prove highly effective in treating virtually all types of cancer and perhaps even lead to an eventual cure. 

And that brings us to the specific isotopes required in the TAT process.

As you might imagine, these elements are extraordinarily rare. In fact, as of now, there is no established supply chain for these isotopes.  

The primary elements include short-lived radionuclides such as lead-212, actinium-225, bismuth-213, radium-224, and radium-223.  

These are all daughter/decay elements of radium-228, radium-226, and thorium-228, which can potentially be recovered from uranium and rare earth metals mining process streams. 

The biggest challenge, as it stands right now, is recovery as there are typically only tiny quantities of these elements available in the process stream — we’re talking gram scale here. 

Yet, where there are challenges there is also opportunity as the pharmaceutical industry, at present, only requires milligram quantities of these isotopes for clinical trials and for the initial commercialization of Targeted Alpha-Particle Therapy. Later on, gram/kg quantities will be needed for broader commercialization. 

Once again, due to the rarity of these elements, there currently is no reported price point for any of the radionuclides that are requisite for TAT. 

In other words, this could be an untapped, multi-$billion market for select companies involved in the mining and processing of U3O8 — aka, yellowcake — and certain rare earth elements.

At Daily Profit Cycle, our team is constantly on the lookout for these types of “hidden gem” profit opportunities… and our research into TAT and the rare isotopes needed for the technology is only just beginning. 

More than just an opportunity for wealth accumulation, we’re talking about an emerging medical technology that could potentially save the lives of millions of cancer patients in the not too distant future. 

I actually have a close friend and fellow mountain biking enthusiast that’s battling stage 4 prostate cancer as we speak. Luckily, or fortunately, I should say, since he’s doing all of the right things to prepare his body for the long fight — he’s doing amazingly well. 

He’s also in line to receive his first series of TAT treatments in the coming months. I hope to be reporting on the resounding success of those treatments shortly thereafter. Fingers crossed! 

My ongoing research into Targeted Alpha-Particle Therapy will, in part, focus on finding the top uranium and rare earths companies that are exploring a possible path to recovering these rare isotopes for potential sales to pharmaceutical companies.

Again, this could be a multi-$billion opportunity for the company, or companies, that are able to successfully recover these isotopes in the stream process. So stay tuned there!

In the meantime, we’ve identified an under-the-radar, small-cap uranium mining firm that has amassed an industry-leading pipeline of exploration and development-stage projects across the western United States with combined resources of nearly 100 million pounds of yellowcake. 

It’s too early to tell whether the company, at some point, will seek inroads into the medical isotope subsector… but it’s a company well worth checking out based on its own merits in the domestic uranium mining sphere.

Right now, it’s positioning to be a key player in the domestic uranium space as the most diversified In-Situ Recovery (ISR) uranium development company in the United States.

Mike Fagan
Editor, Daily Profit Cycle