Grants and Contributions:

Grant or Award spanning more than one fiscal year. (2017-2018 to 2018-2019)

Over the last 40 years the improvement in medical isotopes has allowed for the effective treatments of manyx000D
types of cancer through the continuous development of both new isotopes and new delivery mechanisms. ABKx000D
Biomedical is developing a suite of imageable embolic microspheres for the treatment of some cancers. One ofx000D
their products is a new and unique method of isotope delivery directly to the affected cells involves the precisex000D
and localized injection of radioactive materials within micro-sized spheres to a cancerous region. Thex000D
production process involves taking non-radioactive spheres containing suitable target isotopes and packingx000D
them into a relatively small volume and then activating them in a nuclear reactor. Due to neutron and gammax000D
radiation interaction with these spheres each undergoes volumetric heating from the energy deposited in thesex000D
interactions. Depending on the materials, sphere geometry, irradiation time and neutron/gamma fields in thex000D
reactor, the heat deposited in the spheres may be significant, and possibly exceed the heat removal capacity ofx000D
the assembly. In such cases the spheres will melt resulting in a loss of the batch of isotopes being irradiated.x000D
ABK Biomedical wishes to develop the irradiation protocols such as to maximize their production output. Thisx000D
project will develop and tests new tools and methods for the simulation of such embolic spheres and attempt tox000D
develop more robust irradiation methods where production can be maximized.