[Isotope-prod] Isotope Discussion

[Hutton Andrew]

Everyone

Here is the email I would like to send ahead of next weeks meeting.  Please correct errors and add anything you think is relevant.  

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Dear Ethan

I wanted to provide you with some additional information on our isotope proposal ahead of our telephone conversation next Tuesday.  

First, the liquid Gallium target.  Gallium is a strange metal in that it melts at 30˚C and boils at 2,400˚C.  We intend to operate at low temperature where the vapor pressure is extremely low.  Gallium is corrosive so we were concerned about the holder.  We designed a Tungsten target holder which would be made in a 3-D printer.  We already have produced a full-scale plastic model in house (see attached photo) and have been in touch with a manufacturer about printing in Tungsten.  We have an estimate from the manufacturer for the price - we scaled it up to cover possible problems.  Now we have tested the process in plastic, we are confident that we can reduce the risk of problems and can therefore reduce our estimate from $177.25K to $60.8K.  This includes the development costs by the company and further targets would be expected to cost  less than half this amount.   




When we prepared out proposal, we were unclear as to how much Cu67 we should aim to produce.  Since the submission, we have tried to develop a better estimate.  We have developed a new cost estimate based on about 1000 people in clinical trials with a dose of 10 mCi each for total of around 10 Ci per year.  We have there changed our operating parameters to one 24 hour run every week with a 4 hour set-up period before, instead of one 4 hour run per week with the same set up period.  This drops the cost of irradiation significantly.  We have checked with our VCU-MCV collaborators who will be doing the separation that the separation costs will not change in this scenario.  These changes bring our costs down to $6.1K per 10 mCi dose, amortizing the one-time set-up costs over 5 years.  We understand that the standard NIH reimbursement fee is $5k per 10 mCi dose for an isotope that is readily available.  To the best of our knowledge, Cu67 is not currently being produced in research quantities anywhere in the US, although we are aware of the work you are supporting at ANL and Iatron.    
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