GE Healthcare and SHINE Medical Technologies said this week they have advanced a process for producing technetium-99, a medical isotope employed in over 40 million imaging procedures annually.
Pharmacies and hospitals produce the isotope using a separate isotope – molybdenum-99 (mo-99), which is in increasingly short supply due to outages at aging reactors that generate the material, according to a GE Healthcare press release. The United States relies on foreign sources for its full supply of mo-99. Nations have also sought to produce the isotope without using reactors fueled by nuclear weapon-usable highly enriched uranium.
The two companies said Monday they used mo-99 produced by SHINE to generate medically usable technetium-99 via GE Healthcare’s Drytec technology. “The positive results of this test confirm that Mo-99 produced by the SHINE process can be incorporated into the existing Mo-99 supply chain,” the press release says. “Once approved by FDA, use of SHINE-produced Mo-99 in DRYTEC Tc-99m generators will not require changes to radiopharmacy practices or how the resulting Tc-99m is used in scanning procedures. SHINE is expected to begin commercial production in 2019 using this new process, and expects to be able to produce enough Mo?99 to supply two-thirds of the US patient population.”
SHINE’s process for producing mo-99 is based on low-enriched uranium rather than weapon-grade material. The company in 2014 inked an extended deal to supply mo-99 to GE Healthcare. SHINE as of October had also received $15 million in cost-sharing funds from the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration as the company seeks a Nuclear Regulatory Commission permit for construction of its planned medical isotope facility in Janesville, Wis.
