GTA nuclear plant to make cancer-fighting isotope
Darlington project will reduce reliance on world supplies
Ontario is about to begin making a high-tech, homegrown treatment for liver cancer at the Darlington nuclear station, easing reliance on foreign supplies — including from Russia.
“We’re providing another option for the world, especially for our allies out there that are looking for a friendly source of these isotopes,” Energy Minister Todd Smith said Wednesday, as Ontario Power Generation announced a partnership with two Ottawa-based companies.
Russia, embroiled in a bitter war with Ukraine following its widely condemned invasion of the country two years ago, is the world’s leading supplier of medical isotopes.
The deal, for which financial terms were not disclosed, will give the province a bigger footprint in the fast-growing medical isotope field that is expected to be worth $30 billion worldwide by the end of the decade.
Ontario already supplies about half of the world’s supply of the cobalt 60 isotope, which is used in cancer treatments and as a medical tracing agent in the body, along with other isotopes.
Pending approval from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the companies BWXT Medical Ltd. and Boston Scientific Corp. — both with production facilities in Ottawa — will be using the isotope Y-90, short for yttrium-90 , produced in a Darlington reactor to make the drug TheraSphere.
For patients with a form of liver cancer known as unresectable hepatocellular carcinoma, it is injected into the body through a catheter and lodges in the tumour “to treat it from the inside out,” Peter Pattinson, president of interventional oncology at Boston Scientific, told a news conference at Princess Margaret Hospital, the largest cancer centre in Canada.
“Up until now, we’ve had to scour the world for new and old nuclear reactors where we could get these isotopes,” Pattinson said. “We need a long-term, ambitious partner.”
The partnership includes Ontario Power Generation subsidiary Laurentis Energy Partners.
“It opens the door for further isotope production,” said Laurentis president Jason Van Wart.
Production of domestic Y-90 is expected to begin by the end of next year, starting with an irradiation process at Darlington. The isotope will then be shipped to Ottawa for processing into TheraSphere, a drug named for its use of millions of microscopic glass spheres containing the Y-90.
The drug has been administered to more than 100,000 liver cancer patients around the world in the two decades since it was developed.
To make TheraSphere, stable isotopes of Y-89 are passed through a nuclear reactor, where they are irradiated by neutrons and transformed into the Y-90 necessary for final production.
This takes place while the reactor is making electricity to provide baseload power for the province, which relies on nuclear power for just over half of its electricity.
Pattinson said about 800,000 people around the world are diagnosed annually with liver cancer, which also claims 700,000 lives a year — making it the fourth most deadly form of cancer.
TheraSphere is now in clinical human testing for brain and prostate cancer, which gives it much broader potential, he added.
Officials said the Y-90 isotope deal will not have a material impact on Ontario Power Generation’s profits.