Development and Production of Iodine-125 Seeds for Brachytherapy

The number of prostate cancer cases in Brazil is increasing and part of the patients are submitted to brachytherapy treatment using Iodine-125 radioactive seeds, which nowadays are imported at a high cost, restricting their application. The local production of these radioactive sources became a priority in order to reduce the problems of prostate cancer management for end users. Such action will permit to spread the use to a larger number of patients. Due to such reasons, the Nuclear Energy Research Institute established a program in order to produce Iodine-125 radioactive seeds. In brachytherapy, these small seeds with Iodine-125 are implanted into the prostate to irradiate the tumor. The Iodine-125 seeds consist of a welded titanium capsule containing Iodine-125 adsorbed onto a silver rod. Concerning the setup of the local production, the optimization of the following activities have been carried out: superficial treatment of the silver rod, development of a process to absorb the Iodine in the silver rod, welding methodology to seal the seeds, leakage and contamination test and source activity measurement.