From the June 2012 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Meanwhile, Shine and Northstar, both start-ups, received grants for developing a non-reactor path. The $25 million in grants are great for them, but the question is not whether the accelerator method will produce some material (it will), but whether the Moly-99 produced is hot enough to produce usable doses of Tc-99m so good imaging can be done. The jury’s still out, but it appears there are some very real obstacles in the processes being proposed.
Concurrently with the development of its accelerator-based technique for the production of Moly-99, North Star Medical Isotopes announced its plan to use the reactor at the University of Missouri, too. But the method they propose to use will not produce the hotter isotope. Yet the Missouri reactor is capable of preparing sufficient quantities of Moly-99 of the right grade for Tc-99m generator production just like the Canadian reactor. So the question becomes, why don’t they just do it?
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The rumor in the marketplace is that a processing plant costing about $30 million is required to handle the Moly-99 produced by the reactor. The University of Missouri is unwilling to make the investment because of potential competing technologies and the possibility that the government or some other entity would compete with them, causing an increase in the inventory of Moly-99 and driving down the return on investment.
The government, through DOE and NNSA, has granted $25 million for developing ways to produce Moly-99 without a reactor. Had we committed this money to the University of Missouri and its reactor program for the purpose of establishing a processing plant, we’d have a practical solution before the 2016 shutdown of the Chalk River reactor. In addition, we’d be producing Moly-99 in the U.S. for use here and for export to others. But as I said earlier, in a world of conflict, politics and personal gain, solutions aren’t always obvious. It appears for nuclear medicine, Chicken Little may have been right.
About the author:
Wayne Webster founded Proactics Consulting in 2003 to provide executive coaching, business planning, and technology assessment support for users and sellers of diagnostic imaging equipment.Back to HCB News
