A multi-user radiochemical synthesis facility for molecular imaging research

核医学是一个既有诊断用途又有治疗用途的成熟医学领域；在其诊断用途中，它涉及给患者注射放射性药物，然后使用扫描仪(例如正电子发射断层扫描的PET扫描仪)对放射性药物的分布进行非侵入性成像，以诊断疾病(例如，发现肿瘤的位置)，或者预测对患有特定疾病的个体患者有效的治疗方法--朝着个性化医学迈出的一步。在治疗用途中，这种放射性药物发出对癌细胞有毒的辐射，可以在对健康细胞造成最小损害的情况下杀死它们。诊断和治疗医学都即将在临床上实施突破性的创新，以造福患者。随着全身PET的问世，诊断能力将很快实现飞跃，它将允许以低得多的辐射剂量进行更快的扫描，并同时使用几种示踪剂来更好地描述疾病。治疗能力也将在未来几年内取得长足进步，因为新型放射性核素-α和俄歇电子发射体-进入临床将有可能将放射性核素治疗从缓解症状转变为根治治疗。为了充分利用这些迫在眉睫的突破，在新的放射化学研究的推动下，需要新一代放射性药物。核医学的研究非常关注开发新的放射性药物，用于不同疾病的新应用。放射性药物的生产和合成需要专门而昂贵的设施，如回旋加速器和机器人合成设备。新放射性药物的研究主要是在与临床用放射性药物常规生产相同的设施中进行的。因此，它必须安装在通常优先的日常生产之间，几乎没有时间和机会用于研究和开发。药品监管机构越来越多地要求将研究活动排除在临床生产设施之外，以保护它们免受污染的风险，进一步限制了将其用于研究和开发的机会。英国拥有世界领先的放射性药物科学研究小组社区，他们正在开发放射性药物的新想法，但由于上述放射化学设施的访问问题，他们在开发想法和将其进行测试方面面临着严重的瓶颈。伦敦国王学院是英国一家主要的PET中心，该中心最近启用了一家新的临床放射性药物生产设施，留下了旧的生产实验室空置。在这个项目中，我们将把这个名为Carl的老实验室改造成一个专门用于放射性药物开发的研究放射化学实验室-这在英国是不存在的-克服了临床生产设施的限制，并提供了一个独特的设施，来自英国各地的研究人员可以通过直接访问Carl或委托工作来生产和供应研究放射性核素和放射性药物，供外部实验室使用。然后，来自英国和国际各地的研究团队将能够开发新的放射性药物，用于临床前评估和潜在的后续临床应用，用于诊断各种高影响的疾病，如癌症、痴呆症、心脏病和感染；以及癌症治疗。

Nuclear medicine is an established field of medicine with both diagnostic and therapeutic uses; in its diagnostic use, it involves administering radioactive drugs - radiopharmaceuticals - to patients, and then either imaging the distribution of the radiopharmaceuticals non-invasively with a scanner (e.g. a PET scanner for Positron Emission Tomography) to diagnose disease (for example, to discover the location of tumours), or to predict which treatments will be effective for an individual patient with a specific disease - a step towards personalised medicine. In its therapeutic use, the radiopharmaceutical emits radiation that is toxic to cancer cells and can kill them with minimal damage to healthy cells. Both diagnostic and therapeutic medicine are on the threshold of implementing ground-breaking innovations clinically, for patient benefit. Diagnostic capability will soon take a leap forward with the advent of Total Body PET, which will allow faster scanning with much lower radiation doses and use of several tracers at once to better characterise disease. Therapeutic capability will also make great strides in the next few years as the introduction of new types of radionuclides - alpha and Auger electron emitters - into the clinic has the potential to transform radionuclide therapy from a palliative (symptom-relief) to a curative treatment.To fully exploit these imminent breakthroughs, a new generation of radiopharmaceuticals is needed, driven by new radiochemistry research. Research in nuclear medicine is very much concerned with the development of new radiopharmaceuticals for new applications in different diseases. The production and synthesis of the radiopharmaceuticals requires specialised and costly facilities such as cyclotrons and robotic synthesis equipment. Research on new radiopharmaceuticals is largely conducted in the same facilities as routine production of radiopharmaceuticals for clinical use. Consequently it has to be fitted in between the routine daily productions which generally take priority, leaving little time and access for research and development. Increasingly, the drug regulatory bodies demand that research activity is excluded from the clinical production facilities in order to protect them from risk of contamination, further restricting the opportunity to use them for research and development.The UK is home to a world-leading community of radiopharmaceutical science research groups developing new ideas for radiopharmaceuticals, but they face a severe bottleneck in developing their ideas and putting them to the test because of the above mentioned problems with access to radiochemistry facilities. King's College London is a major UK PET centre which has recently commissioned a new facility for clinical radiopharmaceutical production, leaving its old production laboratory vacant. In this project, we will convert this old laboratory, known as CARL, into a dedicated research radiochemistry laboratory for radiopharmaceutical development - something that does not exist in the UK - overcoming the restricted access to clinical production facilities and providing a unique facility that researchers from across the UK can use, either by visiting CARL directly or commissioning work to produce and supply research radionuclides and radiopharmaceuticals for use in external laboratories.Research teams from across the UK, and internationally, will then be able to develop new radiopharmaceuticals for preclinical evaluation and potential subsequent clinical application in the diagnosis of a wide variety of high-impact diseases such as cancer, dementia, heart disease and infection; and for treating cancer.