Accelerating the Progress of European Nuclear Medicine

In 2024, CERN celebrated its 70th anniversary and the CERN-MEDICIS facility its 7th year of producing unconventional radionuclides for research in nuclear medicine. 

CERN-MEDICIS accelerates the progress of nuclear medicine by making relevant radionuclides available to researchers well ahead of their future industrial availability, thus allowing their suitability for healthcare applications to be investigated. CERN-MEDICIS is backed by decades of experience in the production of radioactive ion beams and in the mass separation process from the ISOLDE facility and by a vibrant community of collaborating institutes.

In 2024, CERN-MEDICIS has once again achieved important milestones in terms of output of the facility – such as the collection of 1500 MBq Ra-224/Pb-212 and 380 MBq of Ra-225/Ac-225, corresponding to the production of 8 and 38 clinical doses equivalent, respectively. The facility reached a record separation efficiency higher than 70% for Ra.  The facility has provided batches of innovative radionuclides to several hospitals such as the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) in Switzerland and the Klinik und Poliklinik für Nuklearmedizin in Dresden, Germany, as well as to research laboratories such as the Conditions Extrêmes et Matériaux : Haute Température et Irradiation (CEMTHI) in France, the UK’s National Metrology Institute (NPL) in London and KU Leuven in Belgium. 

Through these successful productions and deliveries, CERN-MEDICIS has shown its possibility and capability to produce activity levels and purity levels suitable for clinical applications and received twice the requests from medical doctors to translate its radionuclide for clinical trials.

CERN-MEDICIS is also at the heart of the EC-funded project PRISMAP, which federates key European stakeholders for the translation of emerging radionuclides into medical diagnosis and treatment. The technologies and methods being honed at MEDICIS will directly benefit the future facilities aimed at large-scale radionuclide production through mass separation. Among the 47 user projects approved for funding within PRISMAP, two of them are ready for clinical translation including one requesting radionuclides from CERN-MEDICIS.