Two B.C.-led consortiums are in the race to develop a commercially viable technology to create some of the most needed medical isotopes in the world.
Yesterday, the federal government announced it had finalized agreements with four consortiums to develop new ways to develop technetium-99m, the most widely used isotope for medical imaging, which accounts for approximately 80% of the world’s nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures.
The federal program is meant to develop a new way to create the isotope without the need to use isotopes from nuclear power plants, like the Chalk River reactor in Ontario, which has been a major source of the isotope.
A team led by UBC’s TRIUMF and the BC Cancer Agency received $8 million out of $35 million the government has dedicated to the program. Another team led by Advanced Cyclotron Systems Inc. out of Richmond, was awarded $11 million.
Both teams are developing their own alternative technology using existing particle accelerators. Tim Meyer, TRIUMF’s head of strategic planning and communications said in an interview with Business In Vancouver, “The way we’ve structured our approach is to develop a generic solution that works with all the existing cyclotron models that can be rolled out across Canada.”
All the teams have until March 2012 to present a commercially viable technology.
The opportunity for any of the successful teams could be in the millions, Meyer said. “The global imaging market is a $4 billion to $15 billion market by 2015. How much of that would be impacted by this technology? I think initially, it’d be in the tens of millions in the global marketplace.”