Yttrium‑90 Therapy: How Targeted Radiation is Changing Liver Cancer Treatment

When it comes to treating cancer, many people’s first reaction is radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

The liquid poured into the body along the blood vessels, but in exchange for long-term nausea, vomiting, hair loss, numbness and fatigue in the hands and feet. These side effects made many patients feel sad when they heard it.

And what’s even more cruel is that after enduring torture again and again, the condition may not get better. Someone whose body is dragged down, whose confidence is polished, and who in the end would rather give up treatment: “living like this is worse than not being cured.”

But now, a disruptive new treatment has emerged that, without surgery or medication, is said to kill cancer cells with a single shot, shrink the tumor and make it much easier for patients.

What exactly is this black technology? Let’s follow a real case to find out.

1. After being pronounced “death penalty”, he outperformed death?

In the early spring of 2023, 52-year-old Ms. Li (pseudonym) has been suffering from poor appetite recently, and even her best braised fish suddenly became tasteless.

What bothers her even more is that every time after a meal, her upper abdomen always swells and hurts like a stone, “Is the old stomach problem again?” She and her family didn’t pay much attention at first, thinking that they could just take some stomach medicine and take a rest.

Until a physical examination, where the B-ultrasound doctor found an abnormality, there was a suspicious shadow hidden in Ms. Li’s liver. Further examination revealed a bolt from the blue: multiple tumors developed in the right lobe of the liver!

To make matters worse, cancer cells have invaded the blood vessels within the liver, while the liver itself has developed sclerosis as a result of long-term lesions. Looking at the report card, everyone was in disbelief: Liver cancer? She’s usually teetotaler!

Cirrhosis is an important precancerous lesion of liver cancer, and the appearance of vascular invasion also means that the tumor has obtained a “passport for systemic spread”, which makes the treatment difficult and the recurrence rate significantly increased. Doctors admit that the risk of surgery is extremely high.

The doctor explained to the family that because the tumor was so extensive, the risk of direct surgical removal was extremely high and the effect was difficult to guarantee. Faced with the dilemma of being inoperable, in the next nearly two years, Li successively injected powerful chemotherapy drugs through blood vessels four times, and twice directly starved cancer cells to death by blocking blood vessels.

Every review after treatment is like a thorough examination, which makes people feel uneasy. And the results of the last review made everyone’s hearts sink to the bottom.

The examination revealed two intrahepatic tumors “resurgence” in Ms. Li, which shows that the previous treatments that were repeated failed! Ms. Li, who was tortured to the point of being skinny, was completely shattered and decided that she had been “sentenced to death”.

At a time when Ms. Lee and her family are desperate, a brand new treatment offers them new hope—— Yttrium-90 therapy . Adhering to the idea of a dead horse being a living horse doctor, Ms. Li’s family decided to give it a try, which may be the last chance.

After a comprehensive analysis of the condition by multidisciplinary experts, it was finally confirmed that Li’s physical condition met the requirements of the yttrium-90 therapy. On April 20, 2025, Ms. Li was pushed into the operating room, and the microspheres were accurately “airdropped” along the catheter to the core of the tumor.

On the first day after the operation, the pain in the liver area that continued to torture her was significantly relieved, and there were no adverse reactions such as vomiting and fever in the body. The doctor said that this was because the yttrium-90 microspheres had been accurately ‘mine-laid’, and the cancer cells would wait for them to disintegrate.

The cancer patient, who was on the verge of life and death, finally saw hope in life again.

2. “One injection will shrink the tumor!” Revealing the Yttrium-90 Therapy

The traditional combat method of radiotherapy is to use external rays to penetrate cancerous tissues and attack tumors and normal tissues indiscriminately. It is also a method “killing one thousand enemies and causing eight hundred self-damage”, which may lead to nausea and vomiting, hair loss, numbness of hands and feet, and liver and kidney disease. A series of problems such as functional damage.

And “yttrium 90 microsphere treatment is equivalent to treating millions of micron-sized small balls carrying radioactive materials” Precisely delivered to the tumor nest . It is worth noting that the small ball is only 20-60 microns in diameter, about 1/3 of a hair’s length.

Due Yttrium-90 is targeted , it went deep behind enemy camps, It will only release pure beta rays inside the tumor and will not affect surrounding normal cells, so it can minimize healthy tissue damage .

Yttrium-90 radiation can destroy tumor vascular endothelial cells, inhibit neovascularization, cut off tumor nutrient supply, and form “double kill”. However, traditional anti-angiogenic drugs require long-term use, and yttrium-90 achieves rapid and long-lasting anti-vascular effects through physical destruction.

However, Yttrium 90 is not suitable for everyone and needs to be evaluated in multiple disciplines to rule out excessive tumor burden and severe damage to liver function.

So far, the yttrium-90 microsphere treatment technology has obtained regulatory approval in more than 50 countries and regions around the world, and is widely used in clinical practice, especially in the treatment of liver malignancies, showing good results. And in China, it was also approved for clinical treatment in 2022.

Of course, with liver cancer, a cancer with a high fatality rate, we cannot wait until the liver is broken before we think of treatment, and the real focus should be on early prevention.

3. Liver cancer may double globally in the next 25 years. Can it be prevented?

In July, the leading medical journal “The Lancet” officially released the major report of the Liver Cancer Prevention and Control Committee, which was also the first global clinical committee cancer report led by Chinese experts and scholars.

The report states that liver cancer is the 6th most common malignancy in the world, while China is currently the country with the highest burden of liver cancer in the world . If measures are not taken in a timely manner, it is expected that by 2050, the number of new liver cancer cases and liver cancer deaths worldwide is expected to directly double from 870,000 and 760,000 in 2022.

But this trend is not immutable!

The report points out that more than 60% of liver cancer cases worldwide can be prevented by reducing related risk factors. In summary, the following five points are the following:

1. Strengthen the prevention, screening and treatment of viral hepatitis

Newborns should be vaccinated against hepatitis B in a timely manner, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommends that 90% HBV vaccination coverage be achieved by 2030. Adults 18 years of age and older should be screened for hepatitis B at least once in their lifetime.

2. Control alcohol intake

Alcohol is an independent risk factor for liver cancer. The daily alcohol intake of healthy people is 15g for men ≤25g, women≤. Patients with liver cirrhosis must completely stop drinking to delay the progression of the disease.

3. Environmental risk intervention

Avoid the consumption of mouldy cereals (such as maize and peanuts) to prevent aflatoxin intake; drink clean water sources to reduce pollution exposure; occupationally exposed people need to be protected more.

4. Manage metabolic risk factors

Obese people lose weight scientifically through diet control and exercise, diabetic patients strictly control sugar and test liver enzymes every year; people with fatty liver need to evaluate liver fibrosis every 3 years to block the progression of the disease.

5. Improve liver cancer screening rate

It is recommended that the following high-risk groups be screened every 6 months: those with chronic hepatitis B/C infection; those with cirrhosis of the liver due to any cause; those with fatty liver disease who consume heavy alcohol for a long time or are complicated by obesity or diabetes; and those with a family history of liver cancer in first-degree relatives.

Recommended methods for early screening include: blood test for alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) and abdominal color ultrasound. Early detection can significantly improve survival rate.

In general, getting liver cancer ≠ being sentenced to death, with the help of treatment technologies such as yttrium 90, can greatly improve the patient’s quality of life and extend the length of life, while controlling dangerous carcinogens. Liver cancer may gradually become preventable and controllable.

Disclaimer: All photos used in this blog are generated by artificial intelligence (AI). These images are original creations produced by AI technology and do not depict real people, places, or events. They are provided for illustrative purposes only and cannot be claimed or used as real photographs.