Licenses Signed for ORNL Nuclear Medicine Technology

  Two new ORNL-developed nuclear medicine technologies have been licensed by DeRoyal Industries, a Knoxville-based health care products manufacturer. The two technologies involve methods of concentrating solutions of technetium-99m, the most widely used diagnostic radioisotope in nuclear medicine, which are obtained from generators prepared from the molybdenum-99 parent radioisotope by reactor production.

  Inventors on one patent for production technology include Saed Mirzadeh and Russ Knapp of the Life Sciences Division Assessment Technology Section Nuclear Medicine Group and Emory Collins of the Chemical Technology Division.

  Inventors on the second patent for technetium-99m concentration technology include Russ Knapp, Arnold Beets, Saed Mirzadeh, and Stefan Guhlke (a visiting scientist from the Clinic for Nuclear Medicine in Bonn, Germany) of the Nuclear Medicine Group. DeRoyal plans to start production of the concentrator units in l2-l5 months and projects annual sales of $75-l00 million.

Contact: Russ Knapp
Telephone: 423-574-6225
E-mail: jkp@ornl.gov