“Leveraging a made-in-Canada target technology, the Institute for Advanced Medical Isotopes’ (IAMI) TR-24 cyclotron is capable of producing approximately 1000 Tc-99m patient doses in a single, 6-hour irradiation,” said Schaffer. “With a 6-hour half-life, Tc-99m produced at IAMI can be distributed to hospitals as needed.”

The aim, according to Schaffer, is for IAMI to act as a regional source of Tc-99m to supply to other centers for their respective areas, an endeavor that will carried out with the help of ARTMS Products, a spinoff company of TRIUMF and its collaborators that has partnered with Alliance Medical in the U.K. to begin supplying British patients with Tc-99m in mid-2019.

As part of this objective, IAMI will supply additional isotopes to the TRIUMF-UBC neuroimaging program at the Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, to be used as personalized medicine for patients with addiction, dementia and other mental health issues, as well as PET isotopes for thousands of PET scans annually for cancer patients at UBC and BC cancer sites.

The facility is expected to be fully completed by March 2020 with full functionality established toward the end of 2020.

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