TORONTO (Reuters) - Several companies are in talks by Canadian scientists on commercializing a unaccustomed method to produce a crucial therapeutic isotope without using feedstock from a nuclear reactor, any of the lead scientists said up~ the body Tuesday.

Researchers at the TRIUMF science of energy lab in Vancouver, British Columbia, argue their method, showcased at the American Association because of the Advancement of Science meetings in Vancouver forward Monday, would produce technetium-99m lacking using feedstock molybdenum-99, which is mainly produced at nuclear reactors using enriched uranium.

Technetium-99m is used in medicinal imaging, particularly to diagnose cardiac problems, and is at this moment usually created from decayed moly-99.

The starting a~ method uses cyclotrons, devices already installed in various research hospitals to produce other types of isotopes.

Principal inquirer Tom Ruth said companies interested in in operation with the team include Canada's Nordion Inc, simultaneously with Lantheus Medical Imaging Inc, Covidien, GE Healthcare, General Electric Co's healthcare rigging unit, and Cardinal Health Inc.

He would not affirm what stage discussions were at by any party.

"They would be the ones that would take the technology and it may be they would contract the cyclotrons in a region or across Canada or whatever nation, and run it as a office," Ruth said.

Ottawa-based Nordion is one of the world's largest suppliers of molybdenum-99. It processes it at ~y aging nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ontario, the same of the few reactors in the universe that produces commercial quantities of the soul.

Canada closed the facility over safety concerns in fall of 2007 and afresh from May 2009 to August 2010, causing a worldwide shortage of the isotopes, pushing up prices and encouraging crowd of Nordion's customers to give variety to suppliers. Nordion is still feeling the in the pattern of-effects of the shutdowns.

The Chalk River reactor has been licensed to occasion until 2016, but its future superior to then has not been decided.

Ruth uttered the shutdowns had inspired the design.

"The government of Canada said, give permission to's find an alternative, because the curative community was up in arms," he before-mentioned.

Natural Resources Canada funded four projects in a "on a ~" competition to find a better custom.

The alternative process starts with moly-100, more willingly than enriched uranium, and uses a cyclotron to winding it into technetium-99m. It's not still known how much testing Health Canada would make necessary before approving the process.

"From the of the healing art perspective it's identical to which would be coming out of a generator," Ruth related.

At least a dozen Canadian hospitals be obliged cyclotrons, and there are more than 100 in the United States, he reported.

One hurdle will be to careless a steady supply of moly-100, a relatively rare isotope of molybdenum. But Ruth before-mentioned the new process will be commercially viable.

"We feel that with the economic model our price in quest of the technetium would be competitive through what's available now," he reported.

(Reporting By Allison Martell; Additional reporting ~ dint of. Julie Gordon; editing by Janet Guttsman)

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