Advancing Radiopharmaceutical Development

On Sept. 11, 2025, Medicines Discovery Catapult (MDC), a national life sciences service dedicated to drug discovery, and Crown Bioscience, a contract research organization, announced the companies were collaborating on an integrated translational biology platform for the development of radiopharmaceuticals (1). As part of the collaboration, MDC will provide knowledge in cell biology, high-resolution microscopy, radiochemistry, preclinical imaging, mass spectrometry, and multi-omic tissue analysis, and Crown Bioscience will provide discovery, preclinical, and translations platforms and services for oncology and immune-oncology products.

What makes these treatments unique?

Pharmaceutical Technology® spoke with Juliana Maynard, PhD, Head of Translational Imaging, at MDC, to find out what makes radiopharmaceuticals unique and how MDC’s collaboration with Crown Bioscience can help developers of these treatments for cancer. According to Maynard, radiopharmaceuticals have enormous potential that provide game-changing breakthroughs for cancer patients, and the collaboration with Crown Bioscience will create a fully integrated pre-clinical workflow for developing radiopharmaceuticals globally as well as explore new isotopes or optimize targeting agents.

“At their core, they are a class of medicines that contain both a radioactive form of a chemical element, something we call a radioisotope, and they can be used to both diagnose and also to treat cancers,” Maynard explains. “But what makes them so unique and so powerful is their precision, and what they will do is they will target radiation directly to the tumors. How it works is taking a targeting molecule that binds to that specific receptor on a cancer cell, it will carry the radioisotope then straight to the disease site. And once it's there, the gamma rays themselves will emit either alpha or beta particles and kill the cancer cells for therapy. And what it means is that we can both see the disease through the diagnostic tracer, but we can also treat it in a very targeted way, something we call a theranostic approach. So, it's highly individualized, and it's very much image-guided therapy. So instead of a one-size-fits-all, what we can do is get smarter, safer, and more patient-derived, stratified medicine approach to treatment.”

“Compared with traditional cancer therapies, radiopharmaceuticals themselves, they spare healthy tissue,” Maynard continues. “We don't get those side effects that we've seen with other cancer medicines. And because they're so precisely delivered to those cancer cells, the radiation dose to the rest of the body is significantly reduced, which lowers those side effects. And we've shown proven treatment effects already in some really difficult-to-treat cancers, cancers.”

Click the above video to watch the entire interview.

About the speaker

Juliana Maynard is Head of Translational Imaging at Medicines Discovery Catapult. She has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, and was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Manchester.

Reference

1. MDC and Crown Bioscience. Medicines Discovery Catapult and Crown Bioscience Form Strategic Global Alliance for Radiopharmaceutical Innovation. Press Release. Sept. 11, 2025. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20250911458780/en/Medicines-Discovery-Catapult-and-Crown-Bioscience-Form-Strategic-Global-Alliance-for-Radiopharmaceutical-Innovation

Transcript

*Editor’s Note: This transcript is a direct, unedited rendering of the original audio/video content. It may contain errors, informal language, or omissions as spoken in the original recording.

My name is Juliana Maynard. I'm head of translational imaging at medicines discovery catapult. My background is in imaging science. I did my PhD at the University of Edinburgh, and then I moved to the University of Manchester as a postdoctoral researcher. And after that, I spent nine years in AstraZeneca before deciding to step out of industry to set up a commercial imaging service, and the aim there was to make imaging much more accessible to the wider drug discovery community. And that ambition led me to my career now in medicines discovery catapult, which is a national life sciences organization that's dedicated to turning drug discovery into meaningful commercial breakthroughs. And at MDC medicines discovery catapult, we work very closely with entrepreneur entrepreneurial scientists, and we help them validate their ideas. We derisk their investments, and ultimately, we drive productivity across the drug discovery sector and also impact to patients. And within my team, we focus on applying those translational imaging techniques, technologies like Positron Emission Tomography and computer tomography, to understand how medicines behave in real biological conditions, and this, in turn, helps accelerate drug development. It ensures that those medicines are developed to deliver the maximum therapeutic benefit to our patients. And we're also pioneering in the area of radio pharmaceutical development and translation. And here, we're combining our world class radio chemistry expertise with our state of art imaging technologies, including clinically the world's the UK's first total body PET scanner. So, alongside my role here as head of translational imaging at MDC, I'm also the director of operations and engagement for our national PET imaging platform, and this is a National Technology network that provides the UK research community with unprecedented access to total body pairs.

PharmTech: What is unique about the use of radiopharmaceuticals to treat cancer?

Maynard: So, radiopharmaceuticals really do have enormous potential in modern medicine, and they're already driving game, game changing breakthroughs to patients, and we're seeing that worldwide. And at their core, they are a class of medicines that contain both a radioactive form of a chemical element, something we call a radioisotope, and they can be used to both diagnose and also to treat cancers. But what makes them so unique and so powerful is their precision, and what they will do is they will target radiation directly to the tumors. How it works is taking a targeting molecule that binds to that specific receptor on a cancer cell, it will carry the radioisotope then straight to the disease site. And once it's there, the gamma rays themselves will emit either alpha or beta particles and kill the cancer cells for therapy. And what it means is that we can both see the disease through the diagnostic tracer, but we can also treat it in a very targeted way, something we call a theranostic approach, so it's highly individualized, and it's very much image-guided therapy. So instead of a one size fits all, what we can do is get smarter, safer and more patient derived, stratified medicine approach to treatment, and compared with traditional cancer therapies, radiopharmaceuticals themselves, they spare healthy tissue. We don't get those side effects that we've seen with other cancer medicines. And because they're so precisely delivered to those cancer cells, the radiation dose to the rest of the body is significantly reduced, which lowers those side effects? And we've shown proven treatment effects already in some really difficult to treat cancers, cancers. So, for example, prostate cancer and neuro endocrine tumors have shown huge traction. And also beyond the therapy, as I say, those radioactive traces and the technology advancements that we're seeing within the UK, we can see those incredibly detailed insights to give both earlier but also more accurate diagnostics. So, you know, really, what makes them so unique is that we can combine the diagnostic, diagnosis and the treatment into one, and we're offering earlier detection, you know, better more precise treatment. And ultimately, we should. Lead to better patient outcomes.

PharmTech: What are some of the specific challenges associated with the development of radiopharmaceuticals?

Maynard: That's a really important question, because radiopharmaceuticals themselves have enormous potential. We've seen that, but there are still some very real challenges, both in their development, but also delivery, delivery that we need to overcome. So firstly, the global demand for the radio pharmaceutical treatments themselves is rising fast, you know, around 5% per year currently and growing more and more. And here in the UK, every hospital is using them daily to help patients, but one of the biggest hurdles is the access to the radio isotopes themselves. And at the moment, there are currently no UK production routes for many of the key radionuclides that we need. And that means that our clinical trials and also the widespread use of these therapies are heavily dependent on imports from overseas and from reactors and cyclotrons. And naturally, that supply chain creates risks, and if those supply chains are disrupted, then the access to the treatment and for the patient is immediately effective. Secondly, there are regulatory and quality requirements themselves. So like all medicines ready, pharmaceuticals must be manufactured, transported and administered, and very strict standards to ensure patient safety. And patient safety is at the forefront of every medicine that's produced, but because these products are radioactive and the bar for handling them, and also the compliance and how we administer them, is even higher, and that can slow development and add significant complexity. And then there's also the challenge of the short half life. So the radio isotopes themselves, they do degrade very quickly. So often the medicines have to be produced on the day that they're needed for injection, and also any delay in that transport, the production or the administration, can mean that procedures need to be canceled. We have a wasted product, or worse, a patient could be missing out on a timely diagnostic or treatment. So while the promise of radio pharmaceuticals are huge, overcoming these challenges, particularly around that reliable isotope supply regulations and logistics is critical if we want to see the full impact for our patients, both here in the UK but also worldwide.

PharmTech: How will the new crown MDC platform accelerate the development of radio pharmaceuticals?

Maynard: How will the new crown and MDC partnership develop? So the partnership between Crown Bioscience and Medicines Discovery Catapult it's an incredibly exciting opportunity because it creates a fully integrated pre-clinical workflow for companies that are developing radio pharmaceuticals globally, and whether they're advancing new radio therapeutics, or they're exploring new isotopes or optimizing their targeting agents. This partnership can encompass all of those parts of the delivery so here within medicines discovery catapult, we've built a national radio pharmaceutical platform that combines the cutting-edge imaging technologies with the world class radio chemistry and translational expertise within the team, but crown bioscience themselves, they bring that unrivaled strength in pre-clinical oncology models and drug discovery services. So together, that creates a seamless pathway right the way through from discovery through into pre-clinical validation, but also into those translational imaging studies. And what this means for drug developers is that they can carry out more efficient studies, they can generate that high quality translational data, and it will support their precision medicine strategies. The partnership really does enable that rapid and also reliable testing of how a radiopharmaceutical behaves within the body and also how the body responds to it and how effective the radiopharmaceutical itself is, all of which are absolutely critical to identifying those drug candidates and reducing that clinical development risk. We're also leveraging our expertise across other areas within our organization, our cell biology, high resolution microscopy and also multi omic tissue analysis, and that allows us to deliver robust comparator studies with approved standards of care, which in turn provides greater regulatory confidence and help those drug developers provide and prepare stronger and successful investigational new drug submissions. So, by combining all of our strengths, we're not only helping innovators develop radio pharmaceuticals more efficiently, we're giving them the tools to de risk their investment accelerate the time it will take to get them to clinic and ultimately improve patient outcomes. So, it's all about moving radio pharmaceuticals to market faster and. Doing so in a way that's smarter, safer and more impactful for our patients.