2016 Saskatchewan Isotopes Summit a Success!
October 12, 2016
Continuing the momentum of Saskatchewan’s prominence in the international radioisotope scene, Saskatoon’s Canadian Isotopes Innovation (CII) hosted the inaugural 2016 Saskatchewan Isotopes Summit on Thursday, September 22 at the Sheraton Cavalier in Saskatoon.
The summit was created to discuss the current production of medical isotopes in Saskatchewan and its leadership in the medical isotope industry. The summit brought together key stakeholders from businesses and health regions, industry experts, public officials, funding agencies and investors, in the hopes of building partnerships to support and feed the recent expansion of radioisotope development in Saskatchewan.
The 2016 Saskatchewan Isotopes Summit convenor was CII’s COO (former), Dr. Kennedy Mang’era. Presenters at the summit shared expertise and experiences from a range of backgrounds and included Jim George, original CEO of CII, Dr. Rajan Rakheja of the University of Saskatchewan and Saskatoon Health Region Royal University Hospital, Neil Alexander, past Executive Director of Sylvia Fedoruk Canadian Centre for Nuclear Innovation, Andre Gagnon, President of Isologic Innovation Pharmaceuticals and Merritt Kocdag, Policy Strategist at Innovation Saskatchewan. Topics covered the demand for reliable Mo-99 supply, nuclear medicine trends in Saskatchewan, the path of radioisotopes to commercialization and their clinical uses, current and next-generation radio-pharmaceuticals, and the economic and social impacts of the Saskatchewan radioisotope innovations.
A roundtable discussion followed the formative presentations, hosted by Dr. Paul Babyn, the Head of Medical Imaging at the University of Saskatchewan and Saskatoon Health Region Royal University Hospital. The lively and informative discussions from the panel had great participation and extremely positive feedback from the approximately 50 attendees from the audience.
Confident in the richness of expertise in the emerging medical radioisotope sector in Saskatchewan, CII intends for the Saskatchewan Isotopes Summit to become an annual event. CII will continue its focus on linking of provincial stakeholders and national and international leaders and providing the summit as a forum for the public and private sectors to discuss advances in radioisotope technologies and their application to patient care nationally and globally.
Boilerplate:
Canadian Isotopes Innovation, a branch of Canadian Light Source, is a Saskatoon-based organization that produces Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) a specific type of isotope that is used for by pharmaceutical processes for medical diagnostic tests. CII seeks to solve the world’s current medical isotope shortage by using their clean, safe and dependable process to produce a solution to this critical issue in the radio-pharmaceutical industry.