A replacement for the supply of technetium-99m has been discovered by a research team from the University of Alberta. Technetium-99m is a significant isotope produced by Chalk River reactor of Canada. It was discovered that this medical isotope can be formed in a device called cyclotron to provide reliable nuclear medicine imaging in a safe manner.
Sandy McEwan, medical director with Alberta Health Services' Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton and researcher with the University of Alberta, stated that the team has used a 19-mega-electron-volt cyclotron to produce technetium-99m with supreme quality. McEwan further stated that clinical tests were conducted based on Good Clinical Practice (GCP) standards that focus in safeguarding the human rights of subjects in the trials. These standards ensure the efficacy and safety of the newly formed compounds. Results of these trials were presented by McEwan at the Society for Nuclear Medicine’s annual conference in Miami. These results proved that qualities of the images and the technetium are the same.
The significance of this research was to find a non-reactor-based solution that is viable and can replace the currently produced medical isotope stream developed by the Chalk River facility that generates 40% global supply of the medical radioisotope. The remaining imaging isotopes are obtained from aging reactors in Netherlands, France, South Africa and Belgium.
Technetium-99m is currently used in 85% of worldwide nuclear medicine procedures, and about 20 million imaging procedures are conducted in the U.S. These procedures help in diagnosing patients with diseases such as neurological diseases, cancer and cardiac illness. But these procedures find it difficult to identify the absence or presence of the disease, identify progression or recurrence of the disease and provide suitable treatment options.
McEwan believes that the currently used method can increase the production costs because of expensive retrofitting or replacement processes for reactors across the globe. Besides this, the supply cost of technetium-99m will have to be determined and tests will be conducted to confirm whether the population’s requirements can be fulfilled by producing appropriate quantities through cyclotron.
Source: http://www.ualberta.ca/