Certainly, Madam Chair. It would be a pleasure to address that. I think the CIHR initiative is an extremely important initiative in looking at ways of ensuring that this crisis does not continue longer than it has to, if we continue to have disruptions of technetium supply.
Of the seven projects, I believe four have the potential to have a very early impact on clinical practice. If you look at the projects that have been funded, one is a study of rubidium-82 in cardiac imaging. I believe this will provide the evidence that will enable the regulator to approve this as a new way of imaging the heart. Certainly the literature data suggests that this is an effective way of managing patients. If that research pans out, then it relieves a lot of stress on the technetium system, because cardiology is such a major part of nuclear medicine practice.
I believe there are two projects, one related to imaging the kidney and one related to imaging lymph nodes in patients who have breast cancer, that could translate very rapidly into clinical practice and that could again reduce the amount of technetium that was needed.
There is one slightly more ambitious project looking at red cell imaging. This is where we take a radioactive label, put it on red cells, and use that to measure two things: one, whether bleeding is occurring, and where bleeding is occurring from the gut; and the other, to look at cardiac function in patients who are receiving chemotherapy. Both of these are very important tests that use a lot of technetium. Again, if this test can be substituted, it provides a lot more flexibility to the system.
Finally, I believe this is not a short-term solution but a solution that I believe the scientific community must look at. Can new target design and new technology enable technetium to be produced on cyclotrons? Whether or not that is possible I do not know. I am not a physicist. I do not know. But if the new technology enables us to do that, then it enables us to redefine the business model, so I think this is not short term, but it is very exciting long-term research.