A Richmond-based manufacturer of cyclotrons that produce medical isotopes announced Wednesday that it has sold cyclotrons to the University of Alberta’s department of oncology in Edmonton and Quebec’s Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Sherbrooke.
Advanced Cyclotron Systems Inc. (ACSI) said in a release that it was working with the two academic institutions to solve the medical isotope crisis that has gripped the world since Ontario’s Chalk River nuclear reactor, one the main suppliers of the isotopes, halted production last year due to a heavy-water leak.
ACSI’s cyclotrons produce the medical isotope technetium-99m, which is used to diagnosis and treat heart ailments and cancer.
ACSI expects to have the new cyclotrons built and operating within a year.
In March, the federal government said it would support research into how cyclotrons can help resolve the medical isotope crisis.
BIV readers will recall that ACSI, Port Coquitlam’s Iotron Industries and Vancouver nuclear physics lab TRIUMF are among the many firms nationally that are proposing solutions to the crisis and eyeing the large incentives promised by the Canadian and American governments for those solutions. (See “Locals peddle isotope expertise in United States” – issue 1047; November 17-23, 2009.)