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When “Dilbert” creator Scott Adams recently made a public plea for help accessing a life-extending cancer treatment, the story drew national attention — and sparked some questions about the drug itself.
Adams, 67, revealed in May that he has an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread beyond the prostate and no longer responds to standard therapies.
On Sunday, Adams issued a request to President Donald Trump, via X, to help him access a newly approved drug called Pluvicto.
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A relatively new type of targeted radiation treatment for advanced prostate cancer, Pluvicto aims to slow the disease’s progression — but some barriers may remain in terms of access, timing and side effects.
“My healthcare provider, Kaiser of Northern California, has approved my application to receive a newly FDA-approved drug called Pluvicto,” Adams wrote in the post. “But they have dropped the ball in scheduling the brief IV to administer it and I can’t seem to fix that.”
“I am declining fast. I will ask President Trump if he can get Kaiser of Northern California to respond and schedule it for Monday. That will give me a fighting chance to stick around on this planet a little bit longer.”
Trump shared a screenshot of Adams’ post on Truth Social on Sunday, with the comment, “On it!”
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Kaiser Permanente provided the below statement to Fox News Digital.
“Mr. Adams’ oncology team is working closely with him on the next steps in his cancer care, which are already underway. Since it was approved by the FDA three years ago, Kaiser Permanente’s nuclear medicine and medical oncology experts have treated more than 150 patients with Lu-177 PSMA (Pluvicto) in Northern California alone. We know this drug and this disease.”
Neither the White House nor Adams immediately responded to Fox News Digital’s requests for comment.
What is Pluvicto?
Pluvicto, which has the active ingredient lutetium Lu 177 vipivotide tetraxetan, is made by Novartis AG, a pharmaceutical company based in New Jersey.
The drug delivers targeted ionizing radiation directly to tumor cells, with the goal of minimizing damage to healthy cells, Novartis told Fox News Digital.
The medication is what is referred to as a “radioligand therapy,” according to Dr. Alan Bryce, medical oncologist and chief clinical officer at City of Hope Phoenix.
“It involves a radioactive isotope, which has been linked to a targeting molecule that delivers the isotope to prostate cancer cells,” he told Fox News Digital. “In this way, it has the advantage of concentrating the active drug at the site of the cancerous tissue and delivering less of the drug to healthy tissues.”
Pluvicto “provides a nice alternative means of attack compared to the other options.”
Pluvicto is effective at both suppressing the cancer and extending the patient’s life, according to Bryce. “Its success in suppressing the cancer also means that it frequently improves symptoms, reducing pain and giving the patient more energy,” he added.
Pluvicto is currently the only radioligand therapy approved for prostate cancer, Bryce noted — “so it provides a nice alternative means of attack compared to the other options.”
The drug was approved by the FDA in March 2022 for the treatment of adult patients with a certain type of metastatic prostate cancer — metastatic castration resistant prostate cancer, which has a high level of prostate-specific membrane antigen positivity. The patients would have already received androgen receptor (AR) pathway inhibitors (hormone-blocking drugs that help keep the cancer from growing) and taxane-based chemotherapy (which prevents cancer calls from reproducing).
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As of 2025, the drug is also approved for people who have received AR drugs and are able to delay chemotherapy.
Pluvicto is typically administered via IV infusion every six weeks for up to six doses, depending on how the disease progresses and how the patient tolerates the drug.
Barriers to accessing Pluvicto
Shortages of the radioactive particles in Pluvicto have led to supply chain shortages in the past, which have since improved, according to Dr. Marc Siegel, Fox News senior medical analyst.
Pluvicto must be handled carefully and in a tightly controlled environment because of its radioactivity, Bryce noted.
“This means it is not necessarily available in every oncologist’s office, and in some communities may only be available in certain practices,” he said. “During the initial rollout, there were manufacturing difficulties that limited availability, but that’s no longer an issue.”
Each dose must be manufactured and delivered to the specific patient, Bryce said, as the isotope will decay over time and cannot be stored for future use.
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In Adams’ case, Bryce said, it appears that the drug was approved, but there were scheduling difficulties.
“This may reflect limitations of the medical infrastructure in the local environment, and points to the importance of systems that are able to deliver care as quickly and efficiently as possible while maintaining safety.”
Potential side effects
In clinical trials, the most common side effects of Pluvicto were fatigue, dry mouth, nausea, back pain, joint pain, decreased appetite and constipation, Novartis confirmed to Fox News Digital. These effects are usually mild to moderate.
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Some patients may also notice changes in blood test results, like lower levels of blood cells or certain minerals, which doctors can monitor during treatment.
In rare cases, serious side effects can include bleeding problems, infections (like sepsis), kidney injury or blood clots in the lungs (pulmonary embolism), per the FDA’s prescribing information.
The medication contains a small amount of radioactive material, which means it must be handled carefully to minimize radiation exposure.
Pluvicto can sometimes affect the kidneys and should not be used during pregnancy due to risk to the unborn baby, the prescribing information warns.
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“Chemo has more systemic side effects, because Pluvicto is targeted at affected tissue only,” Siegel said.
According to Bryce, Pluvicto is generally an easier drug to take than chemotherapy, although every patient is different.
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About one in eight men will be diagnosed with prostate cancer at some point in their lives, according to the American Cancer Society. In 2025, it is estimated that about 35,770 patients will die from the disease.
Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths among men in the U.S., following lung cancer.
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