A notable highlight was the start of the new facility MEDICIS at CERN, which led to a press release during its inauguration that reached 10’s Millions people in general media such as the Forbes online edition. The facility is dedicated to the production of non-conventional isotopes, such as 149-152-155Terbium part of a theranostics (therapy & diagnostics) quadruplet that are proposed for both diagnostics and treatment pharmaceuticals. To date, these isotopes have been made available for preclinical tests. MEDICIS is based on dedicated infrastructures to perform production and physical mass separation of medical isotopes, and on a network of collaborating institutes such as the high flux reactor ILL, the high-power cyclotron Arronax, radiopharmaceutical/chemistry groups at NPL, PSI and IST, hospitals of Lemanic Arc. Our young researchers as central part of the network have addressed European ministers and decision makers. At this occasion, the first proof-of-concept was developed in Lausanne Hospital by Dr Cicone and coworkers, who used an injectable drug tagged with an isotope that can be imaged with PET-CT and that can be used with antibodies for targeted therapies, a fast-growing field for new cancer treatments. It was also presented at the European Association of Nuclear Medicine annual congress in 2017 & 2018 and published in the CERN Courier, distributed in accelerator and physics centers across the world.
CERN-MEDICIS operation culminated with new laser systems for isotope production by V. Gadelshin and a world-first production of a new grade of the therapeutic 169Erbium by R. Formento from Advanced Accelerator Applications (AAA)/Novartis and collaborators, which allows the exploitation of this isotope used only for radiosynovectomy (small joints arthrosis treatment) into the field of theranostics (combination of 2 drugs, a targeted treatment, and its imaging companion).
These results, and others, were exposed during the final conference of MEDICIS-Promed in the medieval village of Erice, that brought together world renown oncologists and scientists, from across Europe, Japan, USA and Canada, as well as representatives from international associations and organizations, SME’s and capital venturists to exchange on the latest results and launch new ideas, in the related field of targeted radiotherapy and techniques for radioisotopes.
The MEDICIS-Promed network has shown to be able to provide a seed for structuring the community with some of the young researchers already employed in the pharmaceutical industry while others continue in clinical or academic research. The final conference served to launch a kick-off meeting to form a network of relevant European medical isotope production centers for this starting research community, as a new version of the national isotope program in USA.
