Cyclotron staff at St. Joseph’s Health Care London have recorded a 10,000-mark milestone in the same understated way they work every day to improve patient care and cutting-edge research.
No balloons, no streamers, no fanfare: Just an efficient note atop a printout as the bombardment number spun past 9,999 in the early hours of Dec. 31.
“It’s taken us 15 years to get to this point and our work continues to grow,” says Michael Kovacs, PhD, Lead of Lawson’s Nordal Cyclotron & PET Radiochemistry Facility and Leader of the Imaging Research Program at Lawson Research Institute, the innovation arm of St. Joseph’s.
“The numbers are great but the real satisfaction is knowing every single bombardment means something important to a patient or a researcher working towards better patient health.”
St. Joseph’s GE PETtrace cyclotron is a particle accelerator that produces radioisotopes for use in positron emission tomography (PET) scans across Southwestern Ontario, from Windsor to Toronto. It is a vital tool for ultra-precise cancer diagnoses and for advanced research into scores of diseases.
In patient care, each “bombardment” – a grouping of radioisotopes that are then lab-processed, tested and made into smaller batches – can be used to aid cancer scans for as many as 25 people.
“A precise scan can make a dramatic difference, a life-changing difference, in how someone’s cancer is diagnosed and custom-managed,” Kovacs says. “If we think of the PET scanner as the engine of that transformative work, the cyclotron’s radioisotopes are its rocket fuel.”
Isotopes injected into patients are designed to have a short radioactive half-life – between two minutes and 110 minutes – which is another reason St. Joseph’s cyclotron is such an asset for timely care in the region.
“You can’t store or stockpile them. You have to use them almost immediately, so it’s essential to local and area hospital centres to have a ready, reliable source nearby,” Kovacs says.
About half the batched bombardments are used in patients to help with clinical diagnoses that will guide doctors’ treatment decisions.
The other half are used for research trials and pre-clinical research through Lawson, in fields as diverse as oncology, cardiology, neurology, psychiatry, metabolic disease and infectious diseases. In one promising study, for example, they’re being used to image specific brain proteins as researchers explore new disease-modifying treatment pathways for Alzheimer disease.
The next burgeoning field, Kovacs says, is theranostics: the science of diagnosing cancer and precision-attacking it at the same time. “That’s exciting for me, to be able simultaneously to see what we treat and treat what we see.”
About 15 highly specialized staff work at St. Joseph’s cyclotron facility, plus PhD-candidate researchers and other trainees.
Generous donors through St. Joseph’s Health Care Foundation have made much of this advanced research and next-level technology a reality. During the past few years, the Foundation granted nearly $800,000 in donor support to fund extensive renovations to the facility, making it possible to increase production of isotopes and expand life-saving care. Recently, $1 million in donations supported a new PET/CT scanner – the heart of Canada’s first national GE centre of excellence in molecular imaging and theranostics being developed at St. Joseph’s Hospital.
Still, the 40-tonne, room-sized cyclotron is more than a machine, and more than the experts who process, test, ship and use the radioisotopes, Kovacs notes.
It’s also testament to the vision of St. Joseph’s long-time chief medical physicist Frank Prato, PhD, and to the support of hospital administrators who saw its need and potential, he adds.
“We are innovators, and our vision is that we’re going to expand St. Joseph’s imaging expertise on an even larger world stage,” Kovacs says.
