Boosting cancer treatment, India’s biggest cyclotron facility in Kolkata becomes operational

Kolkata, September 20: The country’s biggest cyclotron facility that will produce radioisotopes vital for the diagnosis of cancer became operational last week. The machine ‘Cyclone-30’ is housed at the Kolkata-based Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre (VECC) under the Department of Atomic Energy (DAE) and will start regular production by 2019 after supporting nuclear systems are commissioned and regulatory clearances are obtained.

The machine Cyclone-30 which is considered as the biggest cyclotron in India for medical appliances first started working for the first time when a 30 MeV beam reached the Faraday Cup (a metal cup designed to catch charged particles in a vacuum) last week.

A new study in the Lancet Global Health released last week found that 8.3% of the total number of deaths in India in 2016 was because of cancer, and the number of new cases has increased from 5.48 lakh in 1990 to 1.1 million in 2016.

At present, many radioisotopes are imported while some are produced in nuclear research reactors such as the Apsara at the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), and remaining in cyclotrons facilities run by large private hospitals. For instance, the country imports radioisotopes Germanium-68/Gallium-68 that accurately diagnose breast cancer, and Palladium-103 to detect and treat prostate cancer. The addition of Cyclone-30, said Roy, will increase the availability of radioisotopes and bring down the cost of treatment. “This high-energy and high-yielding machine will bring down imports while raising the possibility of exporting radioisotopes in the future.”

For the first time last week, the cyclotron became operational when 30 MeV (million electron volt) beam reached the Faraday Cup – a metal cup designed to catch charged particles in vacuum. The beam was used to produce Fluorine-18 isotope to prepare radiopharmaceutical Fluorodeoxyglucose used by the Board of Radiation and Isotope Technology (BARC) to diagnose various types of cancers. VECC also plans to install iodine-123 isotope facility for thyroid imaging and detecting thyroid cancer.