Overview on Recent Developments: Alternative Isotope Production Methodsin Canada

摘要

The supply disruptions of isotopes in 2007 and 2009/2010 caused by unplanned outages at AECL's National Research Universal (NRU) reactorhighlighted the fragility of the supply chain that delivers medical isotopes, specifically Technetium-99m (Tc-99m), to patients in Canada and globally. Tc-99m, which is derived from its parent, molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is the most widely used medical isotope for imaging, and accounts for 80 percent of nuclear medicine diagnostic procedures.