SHINE Medical Technologies has received its first production accelerator as it gears up for manufacturing the medical isotope molybdenum-99.
The accelerator from Phoenix LLC arrived on Oct. 15 in Building One of SHINE’s facility in Janesville, Wis., facility, according to an Oct. 18 press release. It will be used for training, preparing maintenance procedures, and other work as SHINE builds its actual production plant.
“This is a really special day for all of us, and is personally very exciting for me,” SHINE CEO Greg Piefer said in the release. “This delivery represents the culmination of almost a decade of joint work between Phoenix and SHINE, moving from proof of concept, to proof of scale, and now to a commercial-ready unit that can produce thousands of doses of medicine per day when paired with the SHINE target. Our tests in Building One will prove the technology is ready for production and provide us important maintenance and operational data well in advance of starting up the actual plant.”
SHINE plans next spring to start building the manufacturing facility, which when complete will house eight separate units for production without the need for a nuclear reactor. Each of those units will have a Phoenix neutron generator, the release says.
The company plans to begin producing molybdenum-99 for the commercial market in 2021 and to eventually provide one-third of the worldwide need for the isotope, which decays into the isotope technetium-99m. That material is used for medical imaging and other purposes.
The United States currently has no domestic production capability for the molybdenum-99. Several companies are competing to provide that capacity.
