radical

Actinium-225 releases four alpha particles as it decays, but the daughters escape and irradiate the kidneys and salivary glands. Nanocarriers try to hold them in place.

An ADC that carries a gene-silencing strand instead of a chemotherapy, so it can switch a protein off rather than poison the cell.

Auger-electron therapy uses radioactive atoms such as iodine-125 or terbium-161 that release cascades of low-energy electrons travelling only nanometres to micrometres, so they kill a cell only if the atom sits on or inside its DNA and spare the neighbours. Terbium-161 can replace lutetium-177 in existing PSMA ligands; true nuclear delivery remains preclinical.

Bacteriophage delivery uses viruses that infect bacteria, not human cells, as engineered shells whose coat proteins display tumour-homing peptides or antigens and carry drugs or vaccines. They are cheap and cannot replicate in people, but the work is preclinical: no oncology phage trial had reported efficacy by 2026, and the body clears them quickly.

Cancer interception vaccines immunise people who do not yet have cancer but carry a high inherited risk, such as Lynch syndrome carriers, against the antigens their future tumour is predicted to express, so memory T cells remove transformed cells early. Because healthy people accept risk for a probabilistic benefit, the safety bar is far higher and trials take years.

Tumours recruit nerves and use nerve signals to grow. Blocking that traffic, with beta-blockers or botulinum toxin, is being tested.

Instead of attacking the cancer cell, engineering T cells to strip away the scaffolding and the suppressive immune cells that protect it.

Folded DNA machines that open only when they touch a tumour, releasing a payload or clotting the tumour's blood supply.

Bacteria that seek out the low-oxygen core of tumours, then manufacture a drug on the spot.

Switching a gene off for good without changing the DNA sequence, by writing chemical marks onto it.

In vivo base and prime editing would rewrite a cancer's DNA letter by letter inside the body. It works in the liver for inherited disease; nobody has yet corrected a cancer this way in a person.

Chemotherapy leaves behind zombie cells that will not divide but poison their neighbours. Senolytics aim to clear them.

Some tumours contain bacteria and fungi that shelter cancer cells and break down chemotherapy. Killing them may make treatment work.

VHEE radiotherapy fires electrons at 100 to 250 MeV, energies that reach deep tumours and can be steered by magnets, aiming to deliver FLASH-speed radiation from a machine smaller and cheaper than a proton facility. It is still at the accelerator-development and preclinical stage: no patient had been treated by September 2026.