Department of radiopharmaceuticals
Department of radiopharmaceuticals is the most recent in the institute – it was established in 1997. Its primary goal was in introduction of radiopharmaceuticals for positron emission tomography (PET) in Czech hospitals and providing selected radiopharmaceuticals for single photon emision tomography (SPECT). Besides that, it was also focused on research and development of potentially interesting radionuclides and labelled compounds for both diagnostics and therapy. Activities of the department have been since the very beginning closely related to the Department of accelerators, in particular in the field of design, production and operation of solid, liquid and gas cyclotron targets for production of medical radionuclides.
Since 2009, routine production of radiopharmaceuticals was transferred to a subsidiary company of the Nuclear Physics Institute – RadioMedic s.r.o. – that provides various PET and SPECT radiopharmaceuticals on commercial base.
Department of radiopharmaceuticals is now primarily focused on research topics in the following fields:
- Cyclotron production of novel medical radionuclides, in particular non-conventional metal positron emitters for PET imaging (e.g. 61Cu, 64Cu, 68Ga, 86Y, 124I, 230U), and on occasional production of radionuclides for various purposes (e.g. calibrations)
- Cyclotron production of 99mTc
- Fragments of monoclonal antibodies targeting EGFR (nimotuzumab, trastuzumab) labelled with non-conventional metal positron emitters (44Sc, 86Y) for solid tumours diagnostics
- Monoclonal antibodies and their fragments against carbonic anhydrase labelled with 61Cu and iodine radioisotopes
- Development of microfluidic systems for automated labelling of antibodies and their fragments
- Measurement of excitation functions of nuclear reactions induced by protons, deuterons, 3He and α particles on cyclotron U-120M