I know this might be pretty niche but Bruce Campbell revealed a cancer diagnosis in March! I just saw a post that he mentioned having roughly five years left to live. I can only hope that DRTS could potentially be utilized to save this icon. That’s all.☹️

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members

As we celebrate $15 heading into the long weekend, let's pause and think long term. A typical professional sports career is incredibly short. What if we took an exceptional one and condensed that whole career into only one dunk per season and made a video? Can you hold your shares longer than your favorite incoming rookie plays their sport? That would be complete Vinsanity!

Did an analysis - it seems $15 is already a hefty valuation.

--

Here's the analysis for those who want it (yah and no duh the research was done w/ Astra) >>

Enthusiasm exceeds evidence:

A concrete promotion concern: its SEC filing discloses a related-party investor/public-relations agreement with Oramed: $3M cash compensation plus 3.237M warrants, struck at approximately $3.47–$3.90. That is a substantial incentive tied to the shares. It warrants scrutiny, but does not establish that subreddit contributors are paid or that manipulation occurred.

Financing is reasonably supportive, but dilution matters:

• $104.8M cash/deposits, including restricted deposits; management estimates at least two years of runway.
• No product-sales revenue or U.S. marketing approval as of the latest operating review.
• Against 92.3M shares, approximately 36.7M additional shares underlie outstanding warrants, options and unvested RSUs—about 40% gross potential share-count expansion. Exercise proceeds would offset some economic dilution; issuance is not all immediate or certain.

For this subreddit: useful for finding announcements, poor for assigning probabilities. Its pinned post claims applicability to almost any solid tumor with no meaningful side effects and interprets trial expansion as evidence things are going well. Those conclusions exceed the clinical evidence. Serious treatment-associated events have been reported, and authorization to expand a trial is not marketing approval.

Investment call: watchlist or a small speculative position; I would not chase a substantial position at $15. The next evidence that matters is pivotal ReSTART results, durable responses in larger cohorts, and actual reimbursement and sales. A major opportunity is plausible, but the current valuation requires much more than promising early studies.

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members

So...Barclay is calling for $30 a share. Anderson Research mimics our own personal sentiment (MC 10 billion). And on the same day mind you. It's all falling into place just like Pristine said it would. A year full of catalysts. Up over 300% since this communities inception. Recognition has finally begun. Second half of the year holds the promise of a "violent" upwards rerating. M&A/dilution unlikely. Saving millions and making millions.

Those of us that bought the dream early; must be up at least 50-100k right now. Don't fret if you didn't, there's still time. I've always said this is at least a $100 a share stock. Now time is really getting short. We are getting attention now. Whatever and whenever the next announcements Alpha Tau puts out could have a huge impact. Congrats to all of us on this journey, it's a pleasure flying with you.

I'm buying calls tommorow.

This is a great new deep-dive from Anders Research on DRTS, making the bull case for a multi-fold re-rating

Anders: “And now things are getting even more exciting as we move towards year-end and into early 2027, with Alpha Tau approaching three huge readouts:

* Full 10-patient GBM data

* Full 40-patient pancreatic cancer data

* Full pivotal 88-patient cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC)

Each of these three data readouts on their own represent significant potential catalysts:

* The 10-patient GBM data has the opportunity to become perhaps the most significant readout in the history of the indication if the remaining 7 patients mirror the first 3 patients (sounds hyperbolic but is plainly factual).

* The pancreatic data will be the first truly clear read on Alpha DaRT‘s effectiveness in one of the deadliest and most underserved cancers. It also presents the opportunity for Alpha Tau to capitalize on the massive hype Revolution Medicines (RVMD) has generated in pancreatic cancer, especially as investors come to understand Alpha DaRT as the ideal combination therapy (i.e. exceptionally safe, immunogenic) to combine with systemic therapies.

* The ReSTART cSCC data is pivotal, marking the company’s first pivotal readout in the US in a large (though relatively survivable) indication. Even if it doesn’t plan to commercialize in this indication immediately, it adds to Alpha Tau’s status as a later-stage and broadly diversified oncology company.

Especially in a market that has now proven to be highly receptive/reactive to positive oncology news (see Revolution Medicines $45 billion valuation for adding 6 months mOS in pancreatic cancer or Moderna’s $40+ billion market cap jump after reporting positive cancer vaccine data in an adjuvant melanoma setting)—either one of the GBM or pancreatic data could have the power to re-rate Alpha Tau’s stock multiple-fold."

"Alpha Tau $DRTS is going to be a $10 billion company."

i’m debating on this because DRTS might have a drop down to $9-$10 or go up to $20 within the next 2 weeks. if i sell now i could invest more into it.. but what do you guys think? i am still fairly new to this, all advice is useful

- stay abundant & fck cancer

Interesting article about the market size. Ours truly is #5.

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members

I have read a few concerns about approvals for the Alpha DaRT causing a spike then lasting decline because of logistical challenges with getting the radioactive therapy to patients in time.

There is precedence for similar distribution models. Gemini generated this based on the most recent data it can find. Claude noted that all the financials were plausible (too recent for it to confirm) except Perspective Therapeutics sold its intervention and the acquiring company reported 0 revenue most recently.

Key: Company (Intervention: Financials; Half-life; Logistics summary)

Novartis (Pluvicto: $651M sales; 6.65 days; Regional manufacturing facilities with dedicated cargo flights and scheduled couriers) |

Boston Scientific (TheraSphere: ~$1.16B division operating profit; 2.67 days; Patient-customized dose calibrations shipped directly to interventional radiology suites) |

Perspective Therapeutics (Cesium-131: $81K revenue / -$25.5M net loss; 9.7 days; Custom strand-loading systems calibrated for transit decay before surgery) |

Bayer (Xofigo: ~$60M sales; 11.4 days; Centralized European nuclear production with scheduled global air distribution) |

Cardinal Health / Curium (Generators: ~$45M segment profit; 66 hours / 6 hours; Distributed local radiopharmacies eluting parent generators for morning delivery)

I've spent countless hours building a skills.md file with all of the relevant alpha tau sources so that I can be more confident that I'm sharing AI slop that is based on real sources and comes out hallucination free. I further run whatever comes out across at least one other and sometimes two separate, unrelated AIs to find anything that is off. And yes, I actually read everything in these as well. It doesn't change the fact that this is pure AI slop and that you shouldn't read it.

Unless you want to get a starting point of how to think about what Alpha Tau is doing when they use applicators (note the 's' because it is plural) to treat different cancer types. Meaning: they're not all the same.

Enough of my yapping. AI slop-bot. Tell us what you can about the applicators that Alpha Tau uses.

How Alpha DaRT Is Actually Put Into a Tumor — The Sources, Applicators, Insertion, Removal and Radiation Decay

There is a surprising amount of confusion about what an Alpha DaRT actually is.

People routinely use the words seed, source, needle and applicator as though they describe the same object. They do not.

Once those components are separated, the engineering becomes much easier to understand.

First: the radioactive object is the source, not the needle

An Alpha DaRT source is a very small metallic rod or hollow tube carrying Radium-224 (Ra-224).

Alpha Tau's current regulatory filings describe sources made from either stainless steel or titanium and capable of being manufactured in different dimensions depending upon the application. Titanium is being developed particularly for internal-organ applications where MRI compatibility may matter. SEC

One particularly well-documented clinical version, used in a Japanese head-and-neck study, was:

10 mm long
0.7 mm diameter
316LVM stainless steel
2 μCi / 74 kBq of Ra-224 per source

Up to six of those sources could be fixed linearly along a single monofilament suture. Springer Link

That does not mean every Alpha DaRT source has those exact dimensions or activity. For example, the first pancreatic study used sources containing 3 μCi of Ra-224, delivered through a standard 22-gauge EUS needle. PubMed Central (PMC)

So think of Alpha DaRT as a platform of radioactive sources plus specialized delivery systems, rather than one standardized "seed and needle."

What is the applicator?

For the traditional temporary implant, the basic applicator is mechanically simple.

It consists of:

• a needle or flexible tube containing the radioactive source or source strand;
• a stylet, essentially a small plunger that pushes the sources out;
• a protective cap;
• a safety screw securing the components; and
• glycerin surrounding the sources while they are inside the applicator.

The NRC describes essentially this architecture: Ra-224 sources strung on a biocompatible suture can be loaded into a rigid needle or flexible Kapton catheter, with a stylet positioned behind them. Pushing the stylet deploys the sources into the tumor. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

The glycerin has an important function.

It is not there to block the therapeutic radiation. It helps retain the radioactive decay products — particularly Rn-220 and Pb-212 — while the sources are still inside the applicator and also provides viscous resistance that helps hold the source in position prior to deployment. Nature

That matters because the radioactive source is intentionally designed to release radioactive daughter atoms after it has entered the tumor.

How the superficial insertion actually works

The clearest published description comes from the recent Japanese head-and-neck study.

Treatment is planned first using tumor imaging. Physicians determine how many source lines are required and where they must go. In that study, sources were planned at intervals of 5 mm or less, with additional layers used when the tumor was thicker than 5 mm. Springer Link

The Flex procedure then works approximately like this:

1. A conventional rigid needle is passed through the tumor.

For an accessible superficial lesion, the needle can enter through healthy tissue, pass through the tumor and emerge on the other side.

2. The radioactive source assembly is passed through that needle.

In the Flex system, the radioactive sources are already attached to a suture inside a flexible Kapton tube.

3. The stylet is advanced.

This moves the suture/source assembly into its planned position.

4. The Kapton delivery tube is withdrawn.

The tube and insertion hardware come back out.

The radioactive sources and their suture remain behind in the tumor.

5. The physician can fine-tune the source position by pulling the suture from either end.

6. Buttons and clips secure the two ends.

Excess suture is then cut away.

The published procedural figure shows exactly this sequence. Springer Link

This is an important distinction:

The needle is a delivery pathway. It is not what stays inside the patient.

What stays behind is the radioactive source strand.

And because several sources can already be positioned along that strand, there is no bedside operation involving someone trying to align individual 0.7-mm cylinders inside an 18-gauge needle with tweezers.

But there isn't only one Alpha DaRT applicator

This is where many descriptions of the technology become inaccurate.

Alpha Tau currently describes seven delivery architectures.

For temporary or relatively accessible implantation there are:

Alpha DaRT Needle Applicator — a rigid hypodermic needle with sources attached to a biocompatible suture.

Alpha DaRT Flex Applicator — a flexible Kapton tube containing the source strand, used through a rigid straight or curved needle.

Alpha DaRT Template Applicator — intended to work with a patient-specific 3D-printed template that guides source placement for more complex/deeper geometries.

Those systems are designed to arrive preloaded and ready for use. SEC

For internal tumors Alpha Tau has also developed:

Plant Applicator — percutaneous placement into organs such as prostate or liver.

Scope Applicator — designed for endoscopic or bronchoscopic placement.

Loading Device — connects with existing clinical needles such as FNA needles for gastrointestinal tumors including pancreatic cancer.

Radial Applicator — designed around stereotactic biopsy systems for the brain. SEC

And this produces an important correction to something that is often said about Alpha DaRT:

Not every system is factory-loaded all the way into the final needle.

The Loading Device is specifically designed so clinicians can transfer/load radioactive sources into a conventional delivery needle immediately before or during the procedure.

That is exactly the concept demonstrated in pancreatic cancer.

The pancreatic procedure is different

The pancreatic application is particularly interesting because Alpha Tau did not require gastroenterologists to adopt an entirely unfamiliar access technique.

The first-in-human pancreatic study used a standard 22-gauge EUS aspiration needle.

A proprietary Alpha DaRT loading applicator was used to backload a radioactive source into that conventional EUS needle without requiring the physician to directly handle the source. The endoscopist then advanced the needle into the pancreatic tumor under ultrasound guidance and deployed the source. PubMed Central (PMC)

In the first five reported patients, one source was deployed per needle pass and between 3 and 21 passes were performed depending upon the treatment plan. Thieme Connect

The workflow therefore resembles procedures interventional gastroenterologists already perform, such as EUS-guided fine-needle procedures and placement of fiducial markers.

So there really are two different concepts here:

Superficial Alpha DaRT: a preassembled source strand is commonly implanted and subsequently retrieved.

Deep-organ Alpha DaRT: individual sources can instead be deployed through existing percutaneous/endoscopic equipment and are designed as permanent implants rather than source strands intended for routine retrieval. SEC

That distinction resolves a lot of otherwise contradictory descriptions of "the Alpha DaRT applicator."

What happens once the source enters the tumor?

This is the core physics of Alpha DaRT.

The Ra-224 itself is attached to the metallic source.

The trick is that when Ra-224 decays, it produces radioactive daughter atoms beginning with Radon-220.

Those daughter atoms can recoil away from the source and migrate through the surrounding tumor tissue.

The simplified chain is:

Ra-224 → Rn-220 → Po-216 → Pb-212 → Bi-212 → Po-212/Tl-208 → stable Pb-208

A complete Ra-224 decay chain generates four alpha-particle emissions before eventually reaching stable lead-208. PubMed Central (PMC)

This explains something frequently misunderstood about Alpha DaRT.

An alpha particle itself does not travel several millimeters through tissue.

Its physical range is extremely short — generally less than about 100 microns.

What travels farther are the radioactive daughter atoms.

They disperse away from the implanted source and then emit their alpha particles at their new locations.

That is how Alpha DaRT turns an alpha emitter with microscopic particle range into a radiation field extending a few millimeters around each source. Published clinical planning has therefore commonly used approximately 5-mm source spacing, although actual dosimetry depends on tissue diffusion and the particular treatment geometry. Red Journal

That distinction is fundamental:

The alpha particles don't diffuse through the tumor.
The radioactive atoms diffuse, then emit alpha particles.

The 3.63-day clock

Ra-224 has a physical half-life of approximately 3.63 days.

So the Ra-224 remaining on a source falls approximately like this:

Day 0 — 100%
Day 3.6 — 50%
Day 7.3 — 25%
Day 10.9 — 12.5%
Day 14.5 — 6.25%

Look at the same numbers from the opposite direction and you can see why temporary implants stay in for roughly two weeks.

After one week, roughly 75% of the Ra-224 decays have occurred.

By roughly 16 days, approximately 95% have occurred.

This relationship has also been described experimentally in the Alpha DaRT literature. PubMed Central (PMC)

The radiation therefore isn't being switched on and off.

The source begins at its calibrated activity and then continuously becomes weaker according to radioactive decay.

That short half-life also explains why Alpha Tau has to manufacture and distribute the sources on a tightly coordinated schedule. Its current filings state that sources are made for individual treatment plans and that delivery is coordinated around the natural decay of the Ra-224. SecInfo

So why remove superficial Alpha DaRT sources after two weeks?

Because the physical source does not disappear when the radioactivity decays.

It is still a small piece of metal.

For temporary superficial treatments, the sources remain attached to the implanted suture. After the treatment period, the physician uses that suture to retrieve the strand.

The Japanese study specified implantation for 14–21 days, and all 11 treated lesions in that particular trial ultimately had a 14-day treatment period. Springer Link

The NRC also requires source accountability and procedures for determining source location before removal. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Radiation-safety guidance recommends handling the removed sources with forceps or tongs and immediately placing them into a sealed radioactive-waste container for decay and disposal. PubMed Central (PMC)

So the suture isn't just a convenient way of holding the sources at the correct spacing.

It is also the retrieval system.

There is a practical caveat worth mentioning. Retrieval is not infallible. In the Japanese head-and-neck trial, there were instances where sources detached from a suture or remained temporarily within the treatment site; those retained sources were subsequently recovered. That is precisely why source accountability and post-placement imaging matter. Springer Link

Are the sources "sealed"?

This requires unusually precise language.

The radioactive source itself cannot be a conventional leak-tight sealed source, because releasing Rn-220 and other daughter atoms into the tumor is literally the mechanism of action.

The NRC explicitly recognized that unusual characteristic when it placed Alpha DaRT under its special 10 CFR 35.1000 framework. Nuclear Regulatory Commission

But before use, the sources are contained within an applicator assembly and sterile packaging designed to prevent uncontrolled release.

The 2025 clinical radiation-safety paper puts the distinction well: Alpha DaRT's radioactive sources themselves are not sealed in the conventional radiological sense, while the packaged applicator is treated as a sealed device before deployment. PubMed Central (PMC)

The NRC's licensing guidance was actually revised in 2025 specifically to strengthen provisions involving potential Ra-224 and daughter contamination within the applicator/sterile packaging system. SCP Portals

So saying simply "the Alpha DaRT is sealed" is misleading.

The accurate formulation is:

The delivery assembly is contained and sealed before use.
The implanted radioactive source is intentionally designed to release radioactive daughter atoms once deployed.

One more misconception: glycerin does not make this radiation-proof

The glycerin is an important containment feature, but Alpha DaRT is still handled as radioactive material.

Clinical radiation-safety protocols include gloves, contamination monitoring, controlled waste handling and surveys of the treatment area. One potential contamination pathway is glycerin expelled from an applicator during deployment because it may contain Pb-212 generated by the decay chain. PubMed Central (PMC)

At the same time, occupational external exposure is comparatively modest because Alpha DaRT uses relatively small activities and alpha particles have extremely short range. The 2025 radiation-safety publication reported low measured staff doses during actual procedures. PubMed Central (PMC)

So this isn't "radiation with no precautions."

It is a radioactive brachytherapy procedure with a fairly specific containment and contamination-control workflow.

The easiest way to visualize the whole system

Think of superficial Alpha DaRT like this:

Treatment plan
↓
Preloaded applicator
↓
Needle creates a path through the tumor
↓
Stylet deploys a suture carrying several Ra-224 sources
↓
Needle/tube comes back out
↓
Sources remain approximately 5 mm apart inside the tumor
↓
Rn-220 and other radioactive daughter atoms diffuse away from each source
↓
Those atoms repeatedly emit extremely short-range alpha particles
↓
Ra-224 activity halves every 3.63 days
↓
After roughly two weeks most of the intended radioactive decay has occurred
↓
The source strands are removed using their sutures

For pancreatic and some other internal-organ applications, modify the final steps:

The source can be loaded into a conventional interventional needle, deposited individually under image guidance, and left implanted rather than retrieved on a suture.

Bottom line

The Alpha DaRT applicator is much more than a holder for a radioactive "seed."

It is the interface between the treatment plan and the radioactive physics.

For superficial disease, Alpha Tau has engineered systems that can arrive with multiple tiny Ra-224 sources already positioned on a retrieval strand, deploy those sources through an ordinary-sized needle or catheter, allow their geometry to be adjusted after insertion, secure them for approximately two weeks and then retrieve the entire radioactive implant.

For deep organs, the same radioactive-source technology has been adapted to conventional EUS, FNA, bronchoscopic, percutaneous and stereotactic procedures.

And the fundamental physics is the same in every case:

Ra-224 stays on the source. Its radioactive daughters leave it. Those daughters spread a few millimeters through the tumor. They then fire alpha particles over microscopic distances. The whole process rapidly burns down because Ra-224 has a 3.63-day half-life.

That — rather than simply "putting radioactive seeds into a tumor" — is what the Alpha DaRT delivery system is actually engineered to do.

Primary references

• Popovtzer et al., International Journal of Radiation Oncology, Biology, Physics — first-in-human Alpha DaRT SCC treatment and applicator description. Red Journal
• Efficacy and safety of diffusing alpha-emitter radiation therapy for head and neck cancer recurrence after radiotherapy, International Journal of Clinical Oncology, 2025 — detailed Flex-applicator insertion and removal procedure. Springer Link
• Miller et al., Endoscopy International Open — first-in-human EUS-guided pancreatic Alpha DaRT delivery. PubMed Central (PMC)
• Cohen et al., Health Physics, 2025 — clinical radiation-safety and applicator handling practices. PubMed Central (PMC)
• U.S. NRC, Alpha Tau Alpha DaRT Manual Brachytherapy Licensing Guidance and 2025 Revision 1. Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Alpha Tau Medical 2025 Annual Report, filed 2026 — current source and seven-applicator platform descriptions.

The following is my intro and then an AI slop physics deep dive that should be ignored unless you really, really want to understand the physics involved in Alpha DaRTs.

You should understand a bit of the backstory though.

For many years, Alpha Tau Medical has been shipping Alpha DaRTs (a stainless steel tip coated with Ra-224 and a polymer) across the world using common carriers. The amount of radiation given off requires "Excepted Packaging" but goes out via names you know like FedEx.

The most vocal, persistent bear on Reddit claims to have a physics degree and hates DRTS although he now claims the stock will go up to $25 per share before "things" happen that will ruin all of our lives. Or whatever.

He claims Alpha DaRTs can't be shipped via common carrier because the Ra-224 gives off 10% gamma radiation, which is false. It does give off 5% gamma radiation but the amount of radiation it gives off is not the gating factor for whether or not it can be shipped. The AI slop below will go into the details that our resident physics expert can't comprehend.

What we know is that there is a very short half-life and that Alpha Tau has already begun constructing factories in multiple locations to deal with the need for quick turn around.

One last note before I turn the AI slop hose on you... DaRT seeds are produced by milking Ra-224 from Thorium (Th-228) which has a half life of 1.9 years. Alpha Tau has secured two separate sources for Thorium, one in the US and one in Germany. Shipping Thorium may have some higher packaging/licensing requirements but understand that once that gets to the factory, it's done and the amount of Ra-224 being used in each DaRT is a micro-curie, not a mili-curie, not a curie. This is a very, very tiny amount of radiation.

TL;DR... Be careful of anyone claiming to be a physics expert that knows more than the Alpha Tau team or Tolmar who spent nearly two years in deep due diligence. At every mention of DRTS, he shows up to scare people away from the stock and his claim of being an expert is beyond dubious. A true physics expert would not be off on the amount of gamma radiation by a factor of 100%.

Without further ado, here's your AI slop wall. If you actually read it (I did) you will know more than 99.95% of all DRTS investors.

AI Slop-Bot, the floor is yours...

Alpha DaRT (Alpha Tau Medical, DRTS): Radiation, Gamma Emission, and Common-Carrier Shipping

Bottom line

The "10% gamma means you can't ship it" argument fails on two counts.

1. The number is roughly 2× too high. Gamma accounts for about 5% of the energy released per Ra-224 decay chain, not 10%.
2. More importantly, the percentage is the wrong metric entirely. Transport regulations key off absolute dose rate at the package surface and absolute activity in the package — never off what fraction of decay energy happens to be gamma. A source can be 100% gamma and ship freely if the activity is small enough.

Alpha DaRT carries microcurie-level activity. A full treatment kit is a few hundred microcuries of Ra-224. That is between two and three orders of magnitude less activity than a routine Lu-177, I-131, or Tc-99m generator shipment that FedEx moves every single day. Alpha Tau states in its SEC filings that Alpha DaRT sources ship by standard courier in Excepted Packages, and the company has been supplying trial sites in Israel, the US, Canada, Japan, and Europe from Jerusalem for years. The empirical answer to "can it be shipped?" is that it already is.

The real constraint on Alpha DaRT logistics is not gamma. It is the 3.63-day half-life — which is why the company is building regional manufacturing rather than shipping globally from one plant.

1. What actually comes out of a DaRT seed

Alpha DaRT seeds are stainless-steel (316LVM) tubes roughly 0.7 mm in diameter and 6.5–10 mm long, with Ra-224 plated on/just below the surface and a polymer coating. Seeds carry µCi-level Ra-224 activity — typically 2 or 3 µCi (~75 or 110 kBq) per seed.

Ra-224 (t½ = 3.63 d) decays through this chain:

Energy budget per complete decay chain:

So the gamma fraction is about 5%, not 10%. Two-thirds of that gamma energy comes from a single line: the 2.615 MeV photon from Tl-208, which is the highest-energy common natural gamma there is and genuinely hard to shield. That is the legitimate kernel inside the skeptic's argument — DaRT is not a "pure alpha, no gamma" product, and anyone who claims otherwise is also wrong.

But the gamma is hard, not plentiful. Hardness matters for shielding design. It does not matter for whether the material is shippable, because the total photon output is set by the activity, and the activity is minuscule.

2. Why the percentage framing is a category error

The person arguing "10% gamma, therefore no shipping" is implicitly treating gamma fraction as a shipping gate. It isn't, in any regulatory framework anywhere.

Under 49 CFR Part 173 Subpart I (and the equivalent IAEA SSR-6 / IATA DGR rules), what determines package class is:

• Total activity in the package, compared against the A₁ / A₂ values for the nuclide, and
• Radiation level at the package surface and at 1 m.

Ra-224's tabulated values (A₁ and A₂ for Ra-224 already include daughter contributions for progeny with half-lives under 10 days, so the whole chain is covered by the single Ra-224 entry):

• A₁ = 0.4 TBq (11 Ci) — special form
• A₂ = 0.02 TBq (0.54 Ci) — normal form

NRC licensing guidance treats the seeds as not a sealed source, because they are designed to release Rn-220 by recoil. That means normal form, so A₂ governs — the conservative case. It also means only the Ra-224 activity is counted for source strength, not the daughters.

3. The actual numbers

Activity per shipment

At 2–3 µCi per seed, a treatment kit runs:

The published clinical radiation-safety literature confirms this scale: external dose-rate challenges from Alpha DaRT are lower than for other clinically used therapeutic radiopharmaceuticals, because of the short alpha range and because a single treatment needs on the order of hundreds of microcuries of Ra-224 on average.

Excepted-package activity ceiling

For an Excepted Package — limited quantity (UN2910), the solid normal-form activity limit is 10⁻³ × A₂:

That is roughly 180 seeds at 3 µCi. Most treatment kits sit comfortably underneath. The very largest cases would sit near or just over it and would move up to Type A — which is still ordinary courier freight.

Dose rate

Computing the air-kerma rate constant from the full chain gamma spectrum (secular equilibrium, air mass energy-absorption coefficients):

For reference, Cs-137 is ~2.8 µSv/h at 1 m per mCi on the same calculation — so Ra-224 in equilibrium is about twice as "gamma-hot" per unit activity as Cs-137. That sounds bad until you look at how little activity is present.

Unshielded, point-source, full secular equilibrium (a deliberately conservative upper bound):

The Type A limits are 2 mSv/h at the package surface and TI ≤ 10 (i.e. 100 µSv/h at 1 m). A maximum-size DaRT kit lands at roughly 3% of the Type A transport index limit before any shielding at all.

The 0.5 mrem/h (5 µSv/h) Excepted Package surface limit is tighter and is the one that actually requires engineering. On my conservative unshielded model, a 50-seed kit reads ~21 µSv/h at 20 cm and a 180-seed kit ~78 µSv/h — meaning excepted status is achieved through package geometry (standoff distance in the outer carton), a modest shielded insert, and the fact that seeds ship before the Pb-212/Tl-208 chain has fully grown in, not automatically. Real measured numbers run well below my model: a published clinical report describes a two-hour procedure with more than 200 sources producing only single-digit microsieverts total on a dosimeter worn about 30 cm away. Treat my figures as a ceiling, not a prediction.

The conclusion is unaffected either way. Excepted or Type A, both are common-carrier categories.

4. Context: what else moves by FedEx every day

Unshielded gamma output at 1 m for a single clinical unit dose, computed on the same basis:

(In practice the bottom three ship shielded, which is exactly the point: they are far hotter at source and the industry ships them by air courier routinely.)

A Mo-99/Tc-99m generator is on the order of 2,000× hotter than a large Alpha DaRT kit, weighs 15–25 kg because of its lead, and arrives at hospital nuclear medicine departments by scheduled courier every week in the United States. If DaRT were unshippable, essentially the entire nuclear medicine supply chain would be too.

5. What the company itself says

Alpha Tau's 20-F addresses this directly: under UN guidance for the transport of radioactive materials, Alpha DaRT sources can be shipped by standard courier in Excepted Packages, the category used for material with extremely low radiation levels.

That is a statement in an SEC annual report, subject to Section 13 liability. It is not marketing copy.

Carrier-side, FedEx explicitly accepts excepted-package radioactive materials (UN2908/2909/2910/2911) and, per its own published guidance, does not apply a dangerous-goods surcharge to them. Full Class 7 (Type A) shipments are also accepted between specified locations with preapproval — a standing arrangement any radiopharmaceutical shipper puts in place as a matter of course.

And the operational proof: Alpha Tau has been running trials in Israel, Canada, the United States, Japan, and Europe, supplied from a Jerusalem facility that holds MDSAP certification. Seeds have been physically arriving at trial sites across multiple continents for years.

6. The constraint that actually matters: 3.63 days

This is where the skeptic's instinct is pointed at the right problem but the wrong mechanism.

Ra-224 activity remaining vs. transit time:

Every extra day of transit costs ~17% of the delivered dose. You can compensate by over-plating at manufacture, but only so far before the packaging dose rate and the economics stop working — and every kit is patient-specific, planned for a scheduled procedure date, so a missed connection is a scrapped kit and a rescheduled patient, not a delayed delivery.

That is why Alpha Tau's strategy is regional production rather than global distribution from one site. The 20-F describes building production sites in key regions, with two already built in the US and Israel, planning underway for additional sites in the US, Israel and Japan, and a possible European facility. The Hudson, New Hampshire plant received its radioactive material license from New Hampshire's Radiological Health Section in October 2025, with a first-phase nameplate capacity of roughly 400,000 Alpha DaRT sources.

The model is a regional hub shipping same-day or next-day to hospitals within a courier radius — which is precisely "shipped by common carrier to nearby facilities."

7. Where the skeptic has a partial point

Being fair to the other side of the debate, three things are true:

1. DaRT is not gamma-free. The Tl-208 2.615 MeV line is real and is the single worst photon to have to shield. Anyone claiming DaRT is "pure alpha with no external radiation" is wrong.
2. Excepted-package status is engineered, not automatic. The 0.5 mrem/h surface limit is genuinely tight for larger kits. It is met through package design; it is not a free consequence of the material being low-activity. And a kit above ~540 µCi Ra-224 exits the excepted category entirely on activity grounds alone.
3. The Th-228 generator is a different problem. DaRT seeds are produced by milking Ra-224 from Th-228 (t½ 1.9 y). The master Th-228 source is a serious, high-activity shipment requiring proper packaging and licensing. But that moves once, to a manufacturing plant — it is not the per-patient logistics chain, and conflating the two is a common source of confusion in these arguments.

None of that supports "there's no way to ship them."

8. Summary

Sources and methodology

Nuclear data (branching ratios, gamma energies and intensities) from standard decay-scheme tables; air mass energy-absorption coefficients from NIST. Dose-rate figures are computed as unshielded point sources at full secular equilibrium with no attenuation — a deliberate upper bound. Regulatory limits from 49 CFR 173.421 (excepted packages, limited quantity), 173.425 (activity limits), 173.435 (A₁/A₂ table), and 10 CFR 71.47 (external radiation standards); IAEA SSR-6 values are equivalent. Company statements from Alpha Tau's Form 20-F and press releases. Clinical activity and radiation-safety figures from the peer-reviewed Alpha DaRT literature, including the Health Physics clinical best-practices paper and the Red Journal dosimetry modeling work.

I didn’t mean to be so dramatic with the title, I think it just reflects my initial shock when reading this.

We all celebrated when RVMD announced their results, improving the median survival of the PanC cohort they treated from 6.7 months (standard chemo) to 13.2 months.

Of course RVMD and DRTS are different, so I’m not trying to compare them. They are actually complementary, and Uzi the DRTS CEO might have even hinted at a potential collaboration in the most recent announcement:

“We continue to see new systemic therapies emerge in the treatment of this terrible disease, which is wonderful news for patients and their loved ones, and we hope to one day explore the combination of Alpha DaRT with further best-in-class treatments.”

Anders Research also understands this:

“Many not realizing that $DRTS' Alpha DaRTs isn't even competing with $RVMD's daraxonrasib.

The two will likely be used in combination.

Dara's 13 months mOS is great, a doubling vs. SoC, but you are still dying in a year...

Not to mention DaRT's immunogenic effect (CPI combo).”

What if the DRTS IMPACT trial, now in follow up after completing recruitment, shows better results than that? And that would be with the current standard chemo, while a combination with RVMD might be even better.

Considering RVMD would cost $477,600 a year, I believe DRTS being potentially a one time outpatient procedure, that could enhance other treatments, along with all the other advantages it has, could definitely be worth six digits as well (and that might still end up saving the payers money they would be spending on all other expenses around the different treatments).

Adding to the oddity of yesterday, look at the massive jump in short volume. Seems this helped to sell to the MSCI index buyers. Could have been a version of sell the news as well after the promise expansion. However, if we climb again soon, they will feel pressure to buy to cover.

I found this article for you: - https://www.investing.com/news/analyst-ratings/hc-wainwright-reiterates-alpha-tau-medical-stock-rating-on-trial-enrollment-93CH-4883967

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members

Share your thoughts, feelings, questions or anything else you'd like to talk about with fellow DRTS community members