In the world of science, cyclotrons are not new. The Nobel Prize-winning invention by University of California-Berkeley nuclear physicist Ernest Lawrence has been part of the technological landscape for more than 90 years. What’s new are the ever-expanding ways cyclotrons are being used to advance nuclear medicine in the fight against cancer and a growing list of other diseases. 

Now, the University of Oklahoma College of Pharmacy is joining an exclusive cadre of research and clinical institutions through the construction of a $12 million cyclotron facility in Oklahoma City, offering greater access to patients and opening doors to new research. OU College of Pharmacy Dean Melissa Medina called the investment an innovative effort to advance patient care, education and research at OU Health Sciences. 

“With the College of Pharmacy’s long history of nuclear pharmacy services, we are proud to be a leader for this project,” she says. 

Large enough to require its own building, a cyclotron uses electromagnetic fields to accelerate charged particles in a circular fashion, creating radionuclides used in advanced medical testing and cancer treatments. 

Compared to X-ray, MRI and CT machines, “cyclotron” isn’t a household word. But these quiet giants are technological wonders that create the isotopes doctors use to sniff out some of the human body’s most elusive threats. 

With only about 1,500 cyclotrons worldwide, they are relatively rare, and the closest viable facility to Oklahoma City is in Dallas, 200 miles away, forcing Oklahomans to travel for tests or wait in line and pay top dollar for diagnostic treatments that could mean life or death.

“We don’t have anything viable for Oklahomans, which is atrocious,” says Wendy Galbraith, OU clinical associate professor of pharmaceutical sciences. “We’ve been working on the right opportunity for the last 20 years.” 

After several years of feasibility analysis by OU clinicians, researchers and administrators, the College of Pharmacy is now moving forward with the two-year process of planning, construction and installation of a state-of-the-art, custom-built cyclotron facility with tons of lead shielding and peripheral equipment necessary for radiopharmaceutical research, development and manufacturing.         

Vibhudutta Awasthi, OU associate dean of research for pharmaceutical sciences, says the completed facility should be ready to use in 2026.

Once it’s ready, Oklahoma clinicians and their patients will have quick and affordable access to radiopharmaceuticals only available now through special order from sources outside of the state, he says. Researchers will have the tools they need to develop and test new radiopharmaceutical diagnostics and treatments against cancer and other illnesses such as Alzheimer’s and heart disease.

The mechanical process of manufacturing FDA-approved radiopharmaceuticals takes place at the molecular level, Awasthi says. Through the cyclotron facility, radio pharmacists can accelerate protons to almost half the speed of light and then collide them into target atoms. The collisions force speeding protons into the atoms’ nuclei, dislodging existing neutrons to create new, radioactive atoms that can be used on the front lines of medicine.

Because of their instability, these new atoms spin off energy that is visible within the human body through positron emission tomography (PET) cameras. While the FDA has approved the use of multiple radiopharmaceuticals and radionuclides for medical purposes, a workhorse in the field is Fluorine 18, which is derived from the “heavy” oxygen atom, Awasthi says.

The isotope is used to create a variety of diagnostic agents, frequently in the form of fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG), which can illuminate the presence of cancer when the body is scanned with a PET camera.

Radiopharmaceuticals such as FDG decay within hours, so geographical distances pose serious challenges for doctors and patients in Oklahoma, Galbraith says.

Getting special medical imaging drugs to doctors who aren’t near a cyclotron creates a real challenge, she explains. Take FDG, a common imaging drug. FDG naturally loses half of its strength every two hours. So when it’s driven from Dallas to Oklahoma City, more than half of the drug’s effective quantity is gone by the time it arrives. 

This means patients in Oklahoma City need to be shipped a much larger initial dose to get the same medical benefit as patients in Dallas and end up paying much more for their imaging tests.

“My dream is to provide all of the FDA-approved radiopharmaceuticals to Oklahomans,” Galbraith says. “Oklahomans don’t have regular access to them. That’s what OU’s investment is all about. On top of that is the research potential.” 

OU’s cyclotron might open doors to new economic opportunities in the biomedical industry, Awasthi says.

“The facility could place OU nicely in collaboration with industry. Pharmaceutical corporations produce new imaging agents,” he says, adding that such work currently takes place in states like California, New Jersey and Indiana. “But they need additional sites where the imaging agents can be produced and tested; that could be OU.

“Now that we’re getting the tools, OU’s nuclear pharmacy will be as capable as anyone in the world for doing these kinds of studies.”

Chip Minty is a Norman-based writer and the principal of Minty Communications, LLC.

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