GE Healthcare and Karolinska University Partner to Optimize Cancer Treatment with PET Tracer Production Facility

GE Healthcare (Chalfont St. Giles, UK) has signed one of the largest cyclotron and radiochemistry system agreements worldwide with Stockholm Sweden’s County Council and Karolinska University Hospital (Stockholm, Sweden).

GE Healthcare will be constructing a complete tracer production facility center for the hospital that will substantially expand its capacity to manufacture PET tracers, a basic component in positron emission tomography (PET) scanning that is most typically used in the diagnosis and assessment of cancer. With the new center, the hospital will achieve three to four times higher PET tracer production capacity compared to now, and it will support the development of new tracers.

The production facility will provide the physicians and patients at Karolinska University Hospital with readily available access to all most frequently used PET tracers in clinical practice. The main area of application of the produced tracers is cancer treatment—by injecting a small amount of PET tracer into a patient followed by a PET scan, possible “hot spots” can be visualized, the areas in the patient’s body where the distribution of tracers can be used for the assessment of metabolic activity associated with cancer.

“The wider availability of PET imaging technology and its benefits for early diagnosis and staging of diseases has grown the interest and demand for new PET tracers. We are entering a new era in molecular medicine with targeted tracers for specific diseases and personalized treatment pathways. The new center at Karolinska will help them improve patient care,” said Karl Blight, general manager, GE Healthcare, Northern Europe.

In addition to cancer, the tracers can be used in the mapping and treatment of cardiovascular and neurologic diseases, and they have an increasingly important role especially in Alzheimer’s, dementia and brain research. The new tracer center includes two PETtrace 800 series cyclotron systems (for cyclotron production), 20 hot cells supporting radiation safety for personnel when they are using the equipment and fully automated and easily programmable TRACERlab FX series chemistry synthesizers that will enable the hospital to monitor the tracer production remotely. The agreement also includes a FASTlab platform for multitracer production that makes the production of different tracers on the same hardware possible.

Karolinska University Hospital will also receive a wide range of technical trainings over the entire contract period and resources for joint innovation projects. The contract is signed to cover delivery, installation, and qualification of the equipment, warranty and service contracts for three years, with an option to be extended by additional two two-year periods.

Uppsala is home to the global headquarters of GE Healthcare’s cyclotron unit, where cyclotrons are developed, manufactured, and serviced by more than 100 employees. It is a center of expertise in protein science and creates technology that pharmaceutical companies can use in the production of biopharmaceuticals, such as insulin, antibodies, and vaccines.

GE Healthcare provides products for medical imaging, software, and information technology (IT), patient monitoring and diagnostics to drug discovery, biopharmaceutical manufacturing technologies and performance improvement solutions.

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