GE Healthcare announced on Friday that it finalized an agreement with Stockholm County Council and Karolinska University Hospital in Sweden to construct a tracer production center for the hospital. It will help the hospital produce three to four times more PET tracers and also assist in the development of new tracers.
The center will feature two of GE's PETtrace 800 Series cyclotron systems, 20 hot cells designed to support radiation safety, and fully automated TRACERlab FX series chemistry synthesizers to allow the hospital to remotely monitor tracer production. It will be ready for production in January 2018.
The PET tracers will be used for mapping and treating cancer, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. PET tracers have increasingly been playing a significant role in Alzheimer's, dementia, and brain research.
"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," Karl Blight, general manager at GE, said in a statement. "We are entering a new era in molecular medicine with targeted tracers for specific diseases and personalized treatment pathways."
GE will also provide the university with a wide range of technical training services for the entire contract period, which will span three years with an option to extend it an additional two years. The contract will also cover delivery, installation and qualification of the equipment.
