Production of innovative radionuclides for medical applications at the CERN-MEDICIS facility

Since its commissioning in December 2017, the CERN-MEDICIS facility has been providing non-conventional radionuclides for research in nuclear medicine. Benefitting from decades of experience in the production of radioactive ion beams and in the mass separation process from the ISOLDE facility at CERN, MEDICIS quickly became a worldwide key player in the supply of novel medical isotopes dedicated to research in the fields of cancer imaging, diagnostics, and radiation therapy. After a few years of operation, successful collections have been performed on a large panel of radionuclides such as ¹²⁸Ba, ^149,152,155Tb, ¹⁵³Sm, ^165,167Tm, ¹⁶⁹Er, ¹⁷⁵Yb, ¹⁹¹Pt, and ^225,227Ac. Several milestones have been achieved on the output of the facility, such as the collection of 0.5 GBq of ¹⁷⁵Yb, and a total separation efficiency higher than 50% reached for ¹⁶⁷Tm in 2020. These collections led to notable recent in-vitro and preclinical results in targeted radionuclide therapy achieved with high molar activity ¹⁷⁵Yb and ¹⁵³Sm products. Constant developments are ongoing, such as innovative target designs, molecular formation to improve the release of some specific isotopes, laser development in the dedicated MELISSA laboratory, study of new implantation foil materials, and post-collection radiochemistry.