PETTEN, 4^th of February 2021 - NRG has delivered lutetium for the first time to an academic hospital and two pharmaceutical parties this month. Sander de Groot, program manager medical isotopes at NRG: “This isotope offers a great perspective for the effective treatment of various cancer indications and with limited side effects. Now that it’s meeting European quality requirements, we can continue to develop the process further to deliver more patient doses and enable research.”

The production process has been developed by the NRG R&D team within the FIELD-LAB framework, a collaboration between NRG and various academic hospitals and pharmaceutical partners. An initial production of 10 patient doses has been produced. Lutetium-177 is an isotope with a high perspective that can be used in the treatment of various types of cancer. The supplied lutetium-177 has been found compliant with European quality standards.

NRG has been irradiating materials in the reactor for the production of lutetium-177 for many years and is the world’s largest player in the field of irradiation services for medical isotope production. Since the summer of 2019, the FIELD-LAB R&D team has been working hard to develop its own production process for lutetium-177 no carrier added (n.c.a.). Petten is the only site in Europe where the irradiation and processing of high-quality products can take place in one location. With the complete chain present on-site, it enables reliable and economical production.