ONTARIO, CANADA, and MUNICH, GERMANY, June 21, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- An international collaboration between Bruce Power, Isogen (a Kinectrics and Framatome company), and ITM Isotope Technologies Munich SE (ITM), announced today a milestone marking the first instance lutetium-177, a short-lived medical isotope, has been produced in a commercial nuclear power reactor.

This milestone was achieved using a new Isotope Production System (IPS) that was installed in Bruce Power’s Unit 7 during a recent planned maintenance outage. The IPS successfully irradiated targets to produce lutetium-177, a medical isotope used in precision oncology for targeted therapy of a growing number of cancers. Lutetium-177 based treatments are designed to precisely target malignant cells while sparing surrounding healthy tissues.

“Bruce Power and our partners at Isogen, ITM, and Saugeen Ojibway Nation are thrilled to have reached this exciting milestone, bringing our partnership project to its final phase as we complete commissioning and approach commercial operations,” said James Scongack, Bruce Power’s Chief Development Officer and Executive Vice President, Operational Services. “Today’s announcement is the culmination of years of hard work by hundreds of dedicated people and we are proud to demonstrate the power of using Bruce Power’s CANDU reactors to provide large-scale, reliable production of critical medical isotopes to use in the fight against cancer.”
As part of commissioning activities, ytterbium-176 was successfully irradiated using the IPS, designed and installed by Isogen, to produce lutetium-177. These isotopes were then sent to ITM in Germany for processing, using its proprietary manufacturing methodology and industrial scale production capacities yielding high-quality, pharmaceutical-grade no-carrier-added lutetium-177 (n.c.a. lutetium-177), which ITM provides to health care facilities around the world. n.c.a. lutetium-177 has been successfully used in various clinical and commercial radiopharmaceutical cancer treatments. ITM holds a U.S. DMF with the FDA for n.c.a. lutetium-177 and has marketing authorization in the EU (brand name EndolucinBeta®).

“Following commissioning of the IPS, physicians and their patients worldwide will have access to a new, dependable supply of lutetium-177 for their cancer treatments,” said David Harris, CEO on Kinectrics. “Moreover, through our partner ITM, pharmaceutical developers can rely on a large-scale supply of lutetium-177 for their clinical trials and commercial products. This milestone demonstrates Kinectrics, Bruce Power, ITM and Framatome’s commitment to innovation and ability to mobilize, as well as complete a large-scale EPC project with both local economic and global health care impact.”

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