Isotope Crisis Highlights Timeliness of SNM Meeting

June 12, 2009 - With the Chalk River* nuclear reactor in Laurentian Hills, Ontario, Canada, shutdown, a reactor that supplies one-third** of the nuclear isotopes to the world, it was very timely when Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper welcomed the SNM annual meeting to Toronto, Canada, emphasizing the importance of molecular imaging to the future practice of medicine.

While the reactor is down for an undetermined amount of time, patients in North America requiring nuclear medicine procedures for diagnosing cancer, and neurological and cardiovascular diseases will face serious delays in medical treatment. As such, the medical isotope crisis places unprecedented importance on the SNM Annual Meeting, which called a press conference to address the issue: “Current Developments in the Medical Isotope Crisis and Molecular Imaging Research Breakthroughs,” on Monday, June 15, 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., in room 810 of the convention center.

The panel of top molecular imaging researchers, in addition to SNM President Robert W. Atcher, Ph.D, M.B.A., President-Elect Michael M. Graham, M.D., Ph.D, Peter S. Conti, M.D., Ph.D, and Henry N. Wagner, Jr., M.D., Johns Hopkins University, will discuss the latest developments surrounding the international medical isotope crisis; and announce major molecular imaging breakthroughs in the detection and treatment of cancers, heart and brain diseases.

Imaging Technology News will be providing all of the breaking news from the 2009 SNM Annual Meeting on ITNonline.net.

* The Chalk River nuclear reactor in Laurentian Hills, Ontario, Canada, is managed by the Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), a Canadian federal Crown corporation, that is a nuclear technology and engineering company that designed and developed the CANDU nuclear power reactor.
** According to medical doctor Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine, the Chalk River reactor supplies about 60 percent of the medical isotopes in the world, and the countries that will be most affected by the shortage are Canada and the U.S.

Read the 2017 article "FDA Clears Path for First Domestic Supply of Tc-99m Isotope." 

For more information: www.snm.org