SHINE Medical Technologies and Phoenix Nuclear Labs, both of Monona, say they’ve reached an important achievement on the road to manufacturing a critical medical isotope.
Phoenix says its neutron generators have created the appropriate level of fusion reactions to work with SHINE’s technology.
“We need to produce a certain number of neutrons per second in order to generate the quantity of molybdenum-99 that our customer, SHINE Medical, will be producing at the facility they’re building in Janesville,” said Evan Sengbusch, Phoenix’s vice president of business development.
Whenmolybdenum-99 decays, it produces technetium-99m, used in imaging procedures performed on 55,000 patients a day to diagnose heart disease and cancer, and to study brain and kidney function.
“This milestone is a big step forward in proving that SHINE has a viable solution for securing a reliable supply of Mo-99 for millions of patients in the U.S.,” said SHINE chief executive Greg Piefer, in a written statement.
Read more at the Wisconsin State Journal.