Agreement to Boost Innovation in Nuclear Medicine Radioactive Tracers

An agreement has been signed that will innovate and increase the availability of tracers for Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanning. The agreement includes the building of a new cyclotron PET tracer production center.

Radiologists use small amounts of tracers in patients together with a PET scanner to help diagnose cancer and find cancer hot spots, for research into dementia and Alzheimer's disease, and to map and treat neurological and cardiovascular diseases. In the future, PET tracers will increasingly be used in molecular medicine to target specific diseases and for personalized treatments.

The tracer center will include two GE Healthcare PETtrace 800 cyclotron systems, 20 hot cells for radiation safety, TRACERlab FX nuclear chemistry synthesizers for remote monitoring of tracer production, and the FASTlab platform that can use one hardware platform to produce multiple types of tracers.

The agreement was signed between GE Healthcare (Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, UK), the Stockholm County Council (Stockholm, Sweden), and the Karolinska University Hospital (Solna, Stockholm, Sweden) and includes comprehensive technical training for Karolinska hospital staff, and joint innovation projects.

Karl Blight, General Manager, GE Healthcare, Northern Europe, said, “The wider availability of PET imaging technology and its benefits for early diagnosis and staging of diseases has grown the interest and demand for new PET tracers. We are entering a new era in molecular medicine with targeted tracers for specific diseases and personalized treatment pathways.”

Related Links:
GE Healthcare 
Stockholm County Council
Karolinska University Hospital