Until Sept 6th, every workday, all year long, at 8AM and 11:30AM (except every other Monday for maintenance) for the past 6 years, a courier would stop at TRIUMF to carefully and quickly pick up a package of medical isotopes called FDG, or fluorodeoxyglucose. The FDG was made at a hot cell in the TR-13, one of TRIUMF’s cyclotrons, by staff from the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA), out of a radioisotope called Fluorine-18 (F-18). F-18 is an unstable version of the chemical element fluorine; it has a half-life of 110 minutes (less than 2 hours), meaning that in that length of time, it decays to half the quantity it was at the beginning. Twenty-minutes after pickup, this courier would arrive at the BCCA near downtown Vancouver to drop off the FDG - the critical chemical for conducting PET scans, which are used to track the progression of various types of cancer, and help doctors to plan and assess treatment.
There will be no more twenty-minute waits because as of September 6, 2010, after years of working alongside TRIUMF experts, the BCCA is undertaking the task of producing medical isotopes on its own. The BCCA’s very own cyclotron is up and running at a new facility, so the BCCA can make all of the F-18 it needs on-site and on-demand, which will allow them to conduct many more life saving PET scans. These PET scans track where the FDG is concentrating within the body. FDG is essentially a sugar and tumours consume significantly more energy than healthy cells; the FDG therefore concentrates near the tumour sites. When the F-18 in the FDG decays, it emits a signal that travels outside the body indicating where the FDG is accumulating. The PET scan shows “hot spots” of FDG which can be used to distinguish healthy cells or benign masses from malignant tumours. Currently the BCCA conducts 3,100 PET scans per year; with the new cyclotron and a newer, faster PET scanner, this number is expected to double in 2011.
What is TRIUMF’s cyclotron TR-13 doing now that the BCCA can make its own radioisotopes? Ken Buckley, a PET Research Engineer at TRIUMF says, "It has been a great experience helping BCCA get their program off the ground and we are now looking forward to making use of the infrastructure at the TR-13 for development projects that will move the Pacific Parkinson’s Research Centre (PPRC) program ahead. This includes improving target yields and improving the radiopharmaceutical synthesis." Paul Schaffer, Deputy Head of Nuclear Medicine at TRIUMF adds "Our relationship with the BCCA will continue to grow with a strong desire on both ends to address some exciting new research ideas in oncology related imaging - and TRIUMF's TR13 may be used to perform research toward those ideas."
With more development time now becoming available on its TR-13 cyclotron, TRIUMF has an opportunity to continue expanding its Nuclear Medicine program with a new level of research and partnership with the PPRC, BCCA, and MDS Nordion. This includes improving target yields, studying new isotopes and radiochemistries, and focusing on new radiotracers for precision work in cutting-edge neurology research. To this end, the Nuclear Medicine team has already been working all out to set up the new GMP lab in the basement of the Radiochemistry Annex.
The TR-13 at TRIUMF is used to produce isotopes for researching some of society's (Canada's) most pressing medical needs, helping to establish the molecular mechanisms responsible for the onset and progression of neurological disorders like Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer's. Research between TRIUMF and the BCCA will also be expanded into identifying additional radioisotopes that can be used to gain a more complete understanding of an individual person’s progression of cancer. TRIUMF and the BCCA are also continuing partners in Proton Therapy, a process for treating eye cancer by irradiating diseased tissue. Finally, with another cyclotron in the city, TRIUMF and the BCCA can lend support to each other’s research projects, strengthening the partnership.
-- Jessica Coccimiglio, Communications Assistant