Deep dive on medical isotopes

brexit-fact-base-london — Photo of Sizewell by SN Thomas Photography

Deep dive on medical isotopes

Medical isotopes are important for diagnosis, the treatment of cancer, and research:

medical scanners use the radiation they emit to produce images;
cancer therapies use isotopes to damage harmful cells;
radioisotopes are an important tool for biomedical research.

In the UK, there are around 700,000 nuclear medicine procedures each year, such as diagnosing coronary disease, detecting the spread of cancer to bones, and treating thyroid cancer.

Medical isotopes are chemicals that undergo radioactive decay. Depending on the radioisotope and the procedure, either a scanner detects the radiation to produce an image (diagnosis), or the radiation damages target cells in the body (therapy).

Technetium-99m (99mTc) is the most widely used diagnostic isotope, accounting for more than 80% of diagnostic nuclear medicine scans. The UK does not produce any 99mTc and relies on imports. Five nuclear reactors in Europe provide around 60% of the world’s production of Molybdenum-99, which is used to produce 99mTc.

Continuous and timely access is vital for patient safety. The isotope has a short half-life, which means the UK cannot stockpile it. Therefore, it is critical to have a supply close to the point of use for medical investigation and treatment. The majority of UK imports comes from EU countries, especially the Netherlands and France.

Even without Brexit, supply of 99mTc is becoming fragile because the isotope is produced using nuclear research reactors built in the 1950s and 1960s. In 2012, the European Commission set up an initiative to bring together the various agencies and organisations involved to secure supply across the EU.

The UK could purchase the isotope outside Euratom, but leaving Euratom would reduce the reliability and timeliness of these vital supplies and likely increase the cost.