Isotope mass separation at CERN: from fundamental physics to clinical translation at CERN-MEDICIS

by Thierry Stora (CERN)

Monday 24 Mar 2025, 11:00 → 12:00 Europe/Zurich

BSP 626 / Zoom

CERN-MEDICIS is an isotope mass separation facility dedicated to the production of non-conventional radionuclides for biomedical research. Historically, isotope mass separation, notably for online separation of exotic isotopes, was pioneered at the Niels Bohr Institute 70 years ago, and soon after developed at ISOLDE at CERN; since then other large scale facilities across different countries have emerged and are developed to serve nuclear physics for fundamental and applied studies.

The MEDICIS facility exploits targets either irradiated with PSB high energy proton beam or irradiated at cyclotrons and in research nuclear reactors at partner institutes part of MEDICIS Collaboration [1]. The facility extends isotope mass separation techniques towards the reliable and efficient production of radionuclides produced in batches for translational biomedical research. Indeed, the new field of theranostics, combining targeted radiopharmaceuticals for both diagnostics and therapy, has seen a striking recent boost, notably exploiting innovative radionuclides with varied and more precise radioactive properties. This triggered PRISMAP, “production of radionuclides by mass separation for medical applications”, funded as research infrastructure within H2020 [2]. The scope of PRISMAP+, as follow-up programme, is under development in the ERVI Roadmap recently supported by the European Council.

In this context, we will report on the operational experience accumulated over the years at ISOLDE, and specifi-cally more recently at MEDICIS.

Important developments of the isotope mass separation technique has thus been made possible for the supply of a range of innovative radionuclides, notably radiolanthanides pure Auger electron or beta emitters, as well as different other elements with alpha emission. We will notably show how the development of the techniques related to target, release and ionization has allowed to reach for the first time relevant High Molar Activity batch activity starting from Low Molar Activity Sm-153 produced at the nuclear reactor BR2 at SCK CEN.

These developments have enabled to receive for the first time a research proposal which proposed the clinical translation in therapeutic clinical trials of a radiobioconjugate - Sm-153[Sm]-DOTA-FAPI - with treatment and theranostics properties at the University Hospital of Heidelberg [3,4].

[1] https://medicis.cern/, accessed Mar 2025

[2] https://www.prismap.eu/, accessed Mar 2025

[3] https://medicis.cern/publications-articles, accessed Mar 2025

[4] https://medicis.cern/approved-projects

MEDICIS-LPHE-EPFL-lectire-03-2025.pdf

MEDICIS-LPHE-EPFL-lectire-03-2025.pptx