Position paper to facilitate patient access to radiopharmaceuticals: considerations for a suitable pharmaceutical regulatory framework

Background: Nuclear medicine has made enormous progress in the past decades. However, there are still significant inequalities in patient access among different countries, which could be mitigated by improving access to and availability of radiopharmaceuticals. Main body: This paper summarises major considerations for a suitable pharmaceutical regulatory framework to facilitate patient access to radiopharmaceuticals. These include the distinct characteristics of radiopharmaceuticals which require dedicated regulations, considering the impact of the variable complexity of radiopharmaceutical preparation, personnel requirements, manufacturing practices and quality assurance, regulatory authority interfaces, communication and training, as well as marketing authorisation procedures to ensure availability of radiopharmaceuticals. Finally, domestic and regional supply to ensure patient access via alternative regulatory pathways, including in-house production of radiopharmaceuticals, is described, and an outlook on regulatory challenges faced by new developments, such as the use of alpha emitters, is provided. Conclusions: All these considerations are an outcome of a dedicated Technical Meeting organised by the IAEA in 2023 and represent the views and opinions of experts in the field, not those of any regulatory authorities.