Today, antibodies are the vehicle privileged by scientists: arising from the immune system, they are capable of binding to the clearly identified antigens that cancer cells carry on their surface. To transport astatine, the solution favored by researchers consists in “attaching it” to a molecule that can detect tumor cells. A novel chemical method developed by the French cancer research center CRCNA 1 and the National Cancer Institute (National Institutes of Health, US) may finally provide a solution to this problem. Yet to be able to use this element in medicine, it is still necessary to find a way of bringing it as close as possible to cancer cells.
The use of iodonium salts, a promising leadĪlthough astatine-211 is too scarce in its natural state to be used for medical purposes, it can now be produced artificially by means of particle accelerators such as the Arronax cyclotron in Nantes (northwestern France), one of the most powerful devices in the world for the production of medical radionuclides. When it disintegrates, it releases a radioactive particle endowed with sufficient energy to destroy any cells it passes through, which makes it a serious candidate for the elimination of cancerous tumors that are currently difficult to treat. A radioactive element that weakly penetrates matterĪ particular isotope of this radio-element is nevertheless of major interest to medical research: astatine-211. This considerably limits the opportunities to study its characteristics, as only traces of the substance can be assembled, and in such infinitesimal quantities (at best, around a billionth of a gram) that they cannot be directly observed or subjected to the analytical instruments that are usually employed to characterize chemical elements. Density is only related to breast cancer because a dense breast can make it more difficult for your healthcare provider to detect cancerous spots when they read your mammogram. Cancer and dense breast tissue appear white on a mammogram. At a time T, it is estimated that only a few grams of astatine are present in a transient fashion on the entire Earth's crust. Having scattered fibroglandular tissue means your mammogram shows some areas of density. Resulting from the disintegration of heavy elements such as uranium, it is highly unstable and in turn breaks down within a few hours. The mystery that still surrounds astatine mostly stems from its extreme scarcity in the natural state.
And for good reason: it is one of the most enigmatic chemical elements. In his famous “Periodic Table of Elements,” he provided for a box to be completed below that of iodine, but it was only in 1940 that astatine (with the symbol At) was officially discovered, after numerous false starts. Mendeleev suspected its existence as early as 1869.
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