Profile
Copper is an abundant metal, essential to biology and used across industry for 10,000 years. In contrast to its stable everyday forms, Copper-67 is a synthetic radioisotope produced for treatment, with a half-life of about 2.6 days.
Copper-67 emits beta particles that deliver therapeutic radiation over a short range, along with gamma photons that allow the same dose to be imaged by SPECT. It is the therapeutic partner of the imaging isotope copper-64, and because both are isotopes of the same element they share identical chemistry, forming a matched theranostic pair.
Copper-67 is used in targeted radionuclide therapy, attached to molecules that carry it to cancer cells. It is in clinical trials as copper-67 SARTATE for neuroblastoma and neuroendocrine tumours, and in PSMA- and bombesin-targeted therapies for prostate and other cancers, with copper-64 used to image and plan each treatment.
Copper-67 has historically been extremely scarce because it requires high-energy proton or alpha accelerator production to achieve useful activity and purity.
StandardX is developing accelerator-driven production capable of producing the commercial-scale volumes needed as copper-67 progresses through clinical trials.