Advanced Production of High Purity Radioisotopes for Nuclear Medicine

Project Summary Abstract ! The availability of reactor produced radioisotopes relies significantly on aging foreign resourcesleading to an uncertainty in the future supply of these lifesaving radioactive ingredientsThe long term goal of this effort is development of a platform technology that can be implemented in existing research reactor infrastructure nationwide for local medical grade radioisotope productionThe proposed method takes advantage of radioisotope separation via nuclear recoil during the irradiation process to ensure a high specific activity radioactive productA challenge with traditional radioisotope production via the neutron capture reaction isthe target isotope and the product radioisotope are both from the same elementConventional separation techniques are not effective for separating isotopes of the same elementtherefore at the end of irradiationthe result is a mixture of the initial target isotopeconsidered a major impurityand the product radioisotope of interestSmall scale research nuclear reactors operate at lower capacities compared to commercial production facilitiestherefore obtaining the required radioisotope specific activitypurityrequired for medical applications is challenging and often impossibleTo ensure a reliable supply of radioisotopes to meet the current and future demand of the healthcare and Randamp D communitiesa patent pending plug and play platform technology for radioisotope production and separation is proposedThis innovative radioisotope production mechanism can be easily adopted by research reactors of any size for medical grade radioisotope productionThe Proposed method is novel because of the platform technology that allows separation of the product radioisotope from the inactive target upon neutron capturefollowed by immediate collection of the productThis contribution is significant to medicine since the collected radioactive isotope can be harvested during the irradiation and shipments of the radioisotope to a local radiopharmacy for drug manufacturing can be prepared with little time delayproviding on demand health careIn this Phase I effortthe focus will beDesign and fabrication of robust irradiation targets thatawill result in an increased radioisotope yield bcan tolerate harsh radiation conditions without compromising structural integrityOptimization of the plug and play prototype for improved yield of radioisotope recoveryEvaluation target and prototype performance through reactor irradiation experiments!Narrative Development of distributed and on demand radioisotope production technologiesthat ensure a reliable supply of radioisotopesand reduce dependence on foreign supplies is fundamental to healthcareSpecifically medical imaging and therapeutic treatment of life threatening diseases such as cancer require a steady supply of high purity radioisotopesThe proposed radioisotope production technology is designed to be adapted by a variety of existing nuclear reactors nationwide for high purity medical grade isotope production and distributionto ensure no medical procedure is compromised due to isotope supply constraints