Siemens' subsidiary PETNET Solutions Inc., the world's biggest distribution network for PET imaging agents, said Monday it's working with the UC Davis Health System and a freestanding imaging center to open a PET radiopharmaceutical research and training facility in northern California.

The 12,000-square foot center would use existing space at UC Davis' Sacramento campus and would help researchers develop new compounds to better find disease, while also expanding access to the short-lived PET radiotracers within the Sacramento region, the partners said.

PETNET would provide PET radiotracers for clinical trials while helping to commercialize imaging agents developed by UC Davis scientists. The project's third partner, the Northern California PET Imaging Center, would use the radiopharmaceuticals made at the facility to scan patients and run studies at its Sacramento clinic.
"This collaboration will help us develop innovative compounds and techniques that can be moved rapidly from the laboratory bench to a patient's bedside, enabling us to truly realize PET's full potential," Julie Sutcliffe, associate professor in biomedical engineering, hematology and oncology at UC Davis, and the new overseer of the program, said in a statement.

The public-private project, which its backers said would cost several million dollars, also involves installing two new Siemens-made medical cyclotrons at the in-development facility to create the substances necessary for research and drug development.

Siemens acquired PETNET when it bought its parent company, CTI Molecular Imaging Inc., in a 2005 deal valued at about $1 billion.

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