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In nine months, BWH will be home to one of about 15 cyclotrons in the nation. This state-of-the-art machine will be housed in the new Cyclotron-Advanced Nuclear Medicine facility just off the Nesson Pike at the Thorn Research Building.
“This facility will make the Brigham a part of a very select club in the molecular imaging world,” Marcelo Di Carli, MD, chief of Nuclear Medicine, said at the April 4 groundbreaking celebration. “BWH’s integration of molecular imaging and nuclear medicine will enable us to improve care and advance our research mission.”
It was almost 10 years ago that clinicians and researchers at BWH began discussing the potential of building a cyclotron facility, which produces isotopes used in diagnosis and treatment for cancers in a way that minimizes damage to healthy tissues. Leadership from BWH’s Biomedical Research Institute, HMS, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Children’s Hospital collaborated on the planning and fund raising for this facility.
This biomedical imaging core system will contain the cyclotron, a high-powered magnet that uses isotopes to create nuclear pharmacy drugs for research imaging. Weighing in at a whopping 22 tons, the cyclotron quickly generates images of tracers as they work through the body for diagnosis and treatment.
“Molecular imaging is the future of image-based diagnosis, and this allows us to work with the whole scientific community and the BRI,” said Steven Seltzer, MD, chair of Radiology. It will bring together researchers who study cancer, cardiology, neurology and other areas, he said.
BWH President Gary Gottlieb, MD, MBA, thanked the many project partners from HMS, DFCI and Children’s Hospital, as well as others involved. “This collaboration brings together industry, science and academia to improve patient care,” he said.