[DM: Does the reactor in Missouri have the capacity to meet U.S. demand for molybdenum-99?]

R.A. It has the capacity to produce about 50 percent of the U.S. market, which, when we're looking at both of our major sources being offline potentially next year, that's certainly better than nothing. The other thing happening is that the Australians built a new reactor with a major mission of isotope production and they aren't quite yet online, but I anticipate it being so in a matter of weeks. They will be able to supply a percentage of the U.S. market -- not a huge percentage, but I think somewhere between 10 and 20 percent. At this point, any additional capacity we can bring online will certainly help.


[DM: What other reactors are available for the medical supply of radioisotopes?]

RA: There are five major reactors [producing medical radioisotopes]. There's the one in Canada, one in the Netherlands, Belgium, France and South Africa. The Australian reactor is coming online as we talked about. It's a new reactor that was completed a year or so ago. There are smaller production capabilities in Southeast Asia, Morocco, and another in Argentina, but those are really only equipped to supply the local market and aren't in a position to have a major impact on worldwide demand. There's a collaboration between Covidien, which is a major supplier of molybdenum to the United States, and Babcock & Wilcox, the engineering firm, to use an old reactor design, but it is actually very well suited to use as a production vehicle for molybdenum-99. That is probably five to seven years away from fruition.

[DM: What new product or procedural trends are you seeing in the molecular imaging community?]

RA: The shift to using positron emission tomography (PET) technology. It's a different radioactive decay process and it enables us to do pretty precise quantitation. It gives us an opportunity to look at differences before and after therapeutic intervention. This is where the real excitement is in terms of molecular imaging in the field of nuclear medicine. We're able to put cancer patients, for example, who have non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on therapeutic protocol and tell within a week or so whether it's working or not. We can potentially avoid having those patients who aren't responding well from going through an entire course of therapy at an additional expense and potentially additional toxicity to the patient.

The sale of instruments is also down pretty dramatically. There's a lot of nervousness after the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 [in effect since 2007]. They focused on reimbursement for imaging and actually proposed cuts in the reimbursement. People doing imaging for a living have been a little more gun-shy about going out and buying new equipment. And then there is the issue of where we're going to be in a year or two if health care reform goes through. Are we going to be able to adequately charge for the services we provide?

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