Alpha radionuclide therapy is steadily gaining importance and a large number of pre-clinical and clinical studies have been carried out. However, due to the recoil effects the daughter recoil atoms, most of which are alpha emitters as well, receive energies that are much higher than the energies of chemical bonds resulting in decoupling of the radionuclide from common targeting agents. Here, we demonstrate that polymer vesicles (i.e. polymersomes) can retain recoiling daughter nuclei based on an experimental study examining the retention of Fr-221 and Bi-213 when encapsulating (225)AC. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.