Radiochemist Pavithra Kankanamalage's research could make medical radioisotopes more available - and help her keep a decades-old promise.
Kankanamalage, who joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2023, innovates ways to improve radioisotope separations. During radioisotope production at ORNL, targets are irradiated to generate radioisotopes important to U.S. missions ranging from national security and energy to medical treatments. Afterward, those radioisotopes must be separated from the target material and other radioactive impurities before they can be used. Since some radioisotopes quickly decay into others, separating them in a timely manner is key.
Kankanamalage is a subject matter expert for three prominent medical radioisotopes: thorium-228, actinium-227 and radium-226. All three are produced by ORNL and funded by the DOE's Office of Isotope R&D and Production within the Office of Science, then provided through IRP's National Isotope Development Center to researchers worldwide for cancer therapies, imaging and diagnostic tests, and other medical uses.
"I hope my research will advance our understanding of radioisotope separation methods that could directly impact the availability of medical radioisotopes within a reasonable amount of time," Kankanamalage said.
In a way, that goal goes back to her childhood. When Kankanamalage was 10 years old, her maternal grandfather died of cancer.
"Seeing how devastated my mom was, I told her, 'When I grow up, I will find a cure for cancer,'" Kankanamalage said. "Growing up, occasionally my mom would remind me of that promise."
Earlier in her career, Kankanamalage told her mother not to hold her to that childhood promise. Her research interest - at least, initially - was in inorganic chemistry, not medical research.
But then, after she earned her doctoral degree from Wayne State University, she came across a postdoctoral position at the University of Missouri Research Reactor related to radiochemistry.
"I realized I would still get to do inorganic chemistry-related work with metals, as I always wanted, but these metals would be even more exciting because they were radioactive," she said.
That was the beginning of a career in radiochemistry that has brought her much excitement and no regrets.
Kankanamalage did postdoctoral work at Argonne National Laboratory and was a staff scientist at Brookhaven National Laboratory but said working at ORNL, with its unique capabilities and opportunities for cutting-edge, competitive research and development, was always a career goal.
"ORNL's long reputation as a frontier in radioisotope production drew me in," Kankanamalage said.
She's particularly proud to have been a part of the DOE-sponsored Actinium-225 Tri-Lab effort to produce more Ac-225, used in revolutionary cancer treatments, through new accelerator-based production methods. The team − made up of researchers from ORNL, Brookhaven and Los Alamos National Laboratory - received DOE's 2024 Secretary Honor Achievement Award for "increasing the global availability of this important radioisotope … long sought after in the medical community for its cancer-fighting potential."
In addition, at Argonne, she played a crucial role in establishing production and separation of the medical radioisotope scandium-47, used in imaging and as a potential theranostic for targeted cancer treatment.
She has high hopes for similar success in her current work.
"And I get to tell my mom I am doing research on making radioisotopes to treat cancer," Kankanamalage said. "No broken promises!"
UT-Battelle manages ORNL for DOE's Office of Science, the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States. DOE's Office of Science is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit energy.gov/science. - Kristi Bumpus
