MDS Nordion, a leading provider of medical isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, urged the Government of Canada and Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) to consult with international experts and obtain their assistance toward activating the MAPLE project to address the current shortage of medical isotopes created by the shutdown of the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor at Chalk River, Ontario - and to avoid similar occurrences in the future.
Given that there are no domestic or international sources of supply that can fully mitigate this shortage, which has caused and will continue to cause unavoidable and serious disruptions to patient care, MDS Nordion has requested that the government direct AECL to honour its long-standing commitment to replace the NRU by bringing the MAPLE facilities into service. These facilities would enable Canada to maintain its leadership position in the innovative and increasingly important field of nuclear medicine.
"The current NRU shutdown - and the shutdown of November 2007 - illustrates the fragility and unpredictability of the global medical-isotope supply system, and highlights the requirement for new research reactor capacity to deliver a reliable long-term supply of medical isotopes," said Steve West, president of MDS Nordion. "The solution to the global medical isotope crisis is in Canada. The infrastructure is in place, and with the assistance of an international consortium of nuclear experts, the MAPLE facilities could be producing medical isotopes to the benefit of patients worldwide."
At more than 50 years of age, the NRU, the largest producer of medical isotopes in the world, produces 30 to 40 per cent of the world's medical isotopes, and approximately 50 per cent of those used in North America. These isotopes are then processed by MDS Nordion at its state-of-the-art, 300,000-square-foot facility in Ottawa. Isotopes produced in Canada are used in approximately 50,000 procedures each day worldwide, including about 5,000 in Canada.
On May 25, 2009, in an interview with Canwest News Service on the status of the supply of medical isotopes, Dr Christopher O'Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine and director of Nuclear Medicine at Brantford General Hospital, said, "If Chalk River does not come back up on line, does not restart, North America will be faced with a significant and chronic shortage of medical isotopes. There just aren't enough reactors out there that can take the place of Chalk River."
MDS Nordion long recognized the serious nature of the aging global reactor infrastructure, and the need to provide a long-term reliable supply of medical isotopes. To this end, in 1996, MDS contracted with AECL to construct and deliver two isotope production reactors and a processing facility dedicated solely to the production of medical isotopes to replace the NRU reactor, a collaboration that became known as the MAPLE project. The Project included two reactors - MAPLE 1 and MAPLE 2 - to provide a steady and redundant supply of isotopes when one of the reactors would go offline for routine maintenance.
MDS Nordion, a business unit of MDS Inc., is a global leader in providing medical isotopes for molecular and diagnostic imaging, radiotherapeutics and sterilization technologies for medical products that benefit the lives of millions of people in more than 50 countries around the world.
MDS Inc is a global life sciences company that provides market-leading products and services that our customers need for the development of drugs, and the diagnosis and treatment of disease.