PETTEN – Kansen voor West visited FIELD-LAB in Petten last Wednesday 9 November. Kansen voor West (Opportunities for West) is one of the larger subsidy providers of this project and every year they choose one of their projects for a work visit. Ruud van Raak, program manager at Kansen voor West, is excited about FIELD-LAB: “It is one of our biggest project, finance wise. It really is a gem.”

Kansen voor West (KvW) is the partnership of the four Randstad provinces (North-Holland, South-Holland, Utrecht and Flevoland) and the four major cities Amsterdam, the Hague, Rotterdam and Utrecht. These eight partners have created a program to give the regional economy within the Randstad an innovative impetus. They do this by providing subsidies to businesses in the region and this was the second time they did. For the large part, the program is being funded by the European Union, European Regional Development Fund.

In 2018 KvW chose to grant 7 million euro in subsidies to FIELD-LAB, its full name the Advancing Nuclear Medicine, Petten FIELD-LAB project. FIELD-LAB is a project of a consortium that consists of NRG|PALLAS, the Dutch Cancer Institute, Amsterdam UMC location VUmc, Radboudumc, Erasmus MC and Futury Chemistry, King's College London and The University of Warwick. Its goal is to stimulate the innovation and development of new nuclear medicine. According to Karlijn van der Schilden, R&D manager at NRG|PALLAS and initiator of this project, this funding was crucial. “With this subsidy we can build the FIELD-LAB facilities and realise our goal to deliver isotopes as a starting material for clinical studies to our partners. Without the subsidy, we would have stayed with research and the opportunity to bring a new product to clinical studies and then market introduction would have remained far away from us."

Van Raak: “The most important thing for Kansen voor West is that our projects have a social impact and help the regional economy. Here, at FIELD-LAB, they work on the development of actual new medicine, which can be of great significance to society. Especially therapeutic medicine. Also, many people work here. And that is beneficial for the local economy.”

A tour of the Energy & Health Campus

The 32 visitors from the eight partners, were welcomed by Ronald Schram, director Strategic Alliances, and Van der Schilden. After the presentation they went for a tour around the Energy & Health Campus, where they visited the construction sites of PALLAS, the Nuclear Health Center and FIELD-LAB. In small groups they were shown around in the Jaap Goedkoop Laboratory by Van der Schilden. And Marnix Bogert, manager Hot Cell Laboratories (HCL), showed the group the ins and outs of the HCL. One of the participants, Louisan Pot, who works at the department of Culture and Heritage at the province North-Holland, has been involved in the subsidy request of FIELD-LAB since the beginning. “You read about it on paper and think to yourself ‘what is this about?’. Now I know what a hot cell is. And what they do for cancer patients… I have experienced this first hand, so I know how important it is. It is just amazing.”

The day ended with a drink and a snack in the Forum. NRG has received a lot of positive feedback from the attendees.