Molecular Imaging Biomarker Production Facility in India Built to Enable Access to PET Technology

A new molecular imaging biomarker production facility in Chennai, India, will enable the healthcare providers in and around Chennai to access positron emission tomography-computed tomography (PET-CT) technology to diagnose patients with life-threatening diseases, such as cancer, cardiac, and neurologic ailments.

Siemens Healthcare (Erlangen, Germany) announced its first molecular imaging biomarker production facility in Chennai, India, helping to strengthen critical healthcare infrastructure in the country to elevate the level of available healthcare services. PETNET Solutions, a fully owned subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions USA, Inc. (Hoffman Estates, IL, USA), operates the largest PET radiopharmacy network with 49 radiopharmacies and distribution centers in the United States, Korea, and the United Kingdom, which produce and distribute PET radiopharmaceuticals to hospitals, clinics, and research facilities for PET imaging.

The new facility in Chennai will produce and supply the required radiopharmaceuticals to hospitals that have PET-CT facilities, which will help ease the burden of healthcare providers to produce their own radiopharmaceuticals. As a result, the new facility will also help reduce the cost of nuclear medicine and expand its reach to a wider community.

The new facility will feature a Siemens Eclipse HP cyclotron and will be Siemens' first molecular imaging biomarker production facility in India. The Eclipse cyclotron will be deployed to manufacture fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), the imaging biomarker used in PET-CT facilities to assist with diagnosis and staging of disease processes and to monitor cellular response to treatments, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

"As advancements in molecular imaging move forward, it is imperative that this technology is made available to everyone in order to better diagnose and treat life-threatening diseases,” said Michael Reitermann, chief executive officer, Molecular Imaging, Siemens Healthcare. "Being able to offer this PET technology to the residents of Chennai and the surrounding community is a giant step in making this dream a reality.”

Currently, there is no PET-CT in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu due to a critical lack of F18-FDG, which has a half-life of only 110 minutes (losing half of its radioactivity every 110 minutes) and, therefore, cannot be imported or transported long distances. The new cyclotron will provide effective delivery of PET radiopharmaceuticals and will greatly increase availability of FDG, which means that many more patients in Chennai and nearby areas will have access to sophisticated PET-CT imaging. For cancer patients, this will allow for earlier lesion detection and differential diagnosis of primary cancers, which is important for treatment and disease management.

Speaking on this initiative, Dhandapany Ragavan, head, Siemens Medical Solutions, India, said, "In India, over one million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. There is a growing need among the healthcare providers to access the latest technology in fighting this life-threatening disease. We are proud to be pioneers in bringing this life-saving technology to India through our world-renowned PETNET Solutions. This technology helps characterize the biology of disease in individual patients and helps to drive the development and use of more effective personalized treatments. Apart from Chennai, we are also considering expanding this network to other parts of the country.”


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