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Radioisotope chemistry

Doing away with radium’s proxies

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Despite the growing clinical use of radium in cancer treatments, the fundamental chemistry of nature’s largest +2 cation remains largely unexplored. Now, structural analysis of a radium complex reveals that its behaviour cannot always be predicted from the chemistry of its closest nonradioactive congener, barium.

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Fig. 1: Surrogate elements cannot always adequately represent fast-decaying radioisotopes.

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  1. Twitter / X: @bioactinide

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Joshua J. Woods & Rebecca J. Abergel

  2. Departments of Nuclear Engineering and Chemistry, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Joshua J. Woods & Rebecca J. Abergel

Authors
  1. Joshua J. Woods
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  2. Rebecca J. Abergel
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Correspondence to Rebecca J. Abergel.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Woods, J.J., Abergel, R.J. Doing away with radium’s proxies. Nat. Chem. 16, 147–148 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41557-023-01426-4

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