Introduction to this special issue on tumor targeting

Excerpt

This issue of Tumor Biology is devoted to tumor targeting with radioconjugates, and includes 12 diverse articles, with another published in a prior issue [1]. It was not a challenge for me to assemble these papers because the authors were participating in three conferences held on this subject during the past year in Uppsala, Stockholm, and Washington, D.C. Having organized 13 meetings devoted to radioimmunoconjugates for cancer imaging and therapy since 1979, I am impressed with the enthusiasm and progress being made despite the long history of this field. Indeed, there have been important clinical advances, both in antibody-based radiotherapeuticals (e.g., tositumomab and ibritumomab tiuxetan) as well as radiolabeled peptides (e.g., somatostatin analogs), with a considerable number of agents now in various stages of clinical development. Robert Sharkey and I summarized progress in cancer radioimmunotherapy recently [2], so I will not expand on this here. …