From CERN ISOLDE to CERN MEDICIS: novel radioisotopes for medical applications

The production of medical radioisotopes is largely dominated by neutron capture at nuclear reactors and fusion-evaporation reactions with cyclotrons based at medical facilities. While those techniques are quite efficient, only a handful of different radioisotopes are regularly used by the medical community. This is in part due to the difficult access to novel radioisotopes during the long pre-clinical and clinical studies. In contrast to this picture, the ISOL technique is rather inefficient for a given radioisotope, but it provides access to a wide catalog of radioisotopes for research. This has motivated a research programme at CERN ISOLDE that has successfully supported the study of, e.g., the theranostic set of Tb isotopes. In order to further support the research emerging from these successes and to ensure a reliable access for medical research teams, a new facility dedicated to the production of radioisotopes by the ISOL method is currently under commissioning at CERN. CERN MEDICIS (MEDical Isotopes Collected from ISolde) consists in a parasitic irradiation point where target units can be activated at ISOLDE, a rail system that can remove those targets from the high-radiation area to an offline separator facility where the ISOLDE know-how can be applied to extract the radioisotopes of interest. Partnership with regional, European and international collaborators allows a community to exchange on these novel radioisotopes from their production up to their use in pre-clinical research. In this contribution, we shall report on some recent highlights from the medical radioisotope programme at ISOLDE and on the progress of the installation and commissioning of the CERN MEDICIS facility.status: accepte