Orateur
Description
Applications of radiations for health is a long story that have started soon after the discovery of radioactivity. Nowadays, radiations are used in oncology, neurology and cardiology. Since 2013, a new wave of applications in nuclear medicine has started, focused on therapeutic agent and the so-called theranostics approach [1]. It combines imaging information and therapeutic use of radionuclides. This new paradigm shows great promises especially because it may allow personalizing the treatment to each patient. The diagnosis test done prior to the treatment allows to determine patient response and to determine the needed injected dose for the therapeutic agent. After treatment, the imaging agent can be used to follow the patient response to the injected radiopharmaceutical. Finally, this approach allows a better control of the targeting and increases the benefit/toxicity ratio as useless treatments on patients with no response to the diagnosis test are avoided. The use of alpha emitters in some patients also shows very promising results [2].
Radionuclides are traditionally produced in (research) reactors, in cyclotrons accelerating protons or are, in some cases, obtained from radionuclide generators. The rapidly growing demand for theranostic applications has stimulated researchers to explore alternative approaches for effectively producing radionuclides. Among them, several have been established or are in development, such as photonuclear reactions, nuclear reactions induced by charged particles other than proton like deuterons or alpha particles, (At-211, Ru-97, Pb-203, Hg-197m …), extraction of progeny from very long-lived sources (Sr-82/Rb-82,Ti-44/Sc-44 …), spallation reactions employing high-energy accelerators possibly combined with mass separation techniques.
GIP ARRONAX is hosting a high energy high intensity multiparticle cyclotron (C70XP). It allows to produce non-conventional radionuclides for the scientific community and the industry. Since 2010, in collaboration with the PRISMA team of the Subatech laboratory, a campaign of systematic production cross section measurements is conducting. This presentation will show the broad spectra of research activities conducted in the facility its current status and recent upgrades, a focus will be done on deuterons and alpha particles induced reactions. In 2025, an internal target system has been installed to allow access to variable energies for our alpha beam and in parallel, a biomedical cyclotron (KIUBE-180) equipped with a beam line and target station connected to the existing rabbit system, is being commissioned.
These developments allow the ARRONAX facility to better fulfil its missions that are to support research in nuclear medicine by providing non-conventional radionuclides and radiopharmaceuticals for clinical trials and also support research in related fields: radiotherapy and radiobiology, radiolysis, physics, ion beam analysis, mass separation through the SMILES project, detector testing…
References
[1] Srivastava, S. C. (2012). Paving the Way to Personalized Medicine: Production of Some Promising Theragnostic Radionuclides at BNL. Semin. Nucl. Med., volume 42 (issue 3), 151-163.
[2] Kratochwil, C. et al (2016). 225Ac-PSMA-617 for PSMA-Targeted α-Radiation Therapy of Metastatic Castration-Resistant Prostate Cancer. J. Nucl. Med. 57(12):1941-1944