OREANDA-NEWS. April 06, 2015. Bebig LLC, a portfolio company of RUSNANO, has launched full-cycle production of microsources for low-dose brachytherapy using iodine-125 isotope in the town of Dubna (Moscow Region).

The project is a joint venture between the European group of companies Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG and RUSNANO. Total investments in the project amounted to 688 million rubles, including RUSNANO co-financing of 496 million rubles.

Brachytherapy is a modern high-tech radiotherapy, the uses of which include treatment of prostate cancer. Brachytherapy can significantly reduce the side effects typical of remote radiotherapy, since the treatment isotopes are delivered directly to the tumor without affecting the surrounding tissue and organs.

Prostate cancer is currently one of the most common forms of cancer among Russian men: about 14,000 Russian males are diagnosed with the disease each year and mortality in the first year after diagnosis is 10.3%. Brachytherapy represents a less damaging alternative to surgery and external radiation for patients with first- and second-stage cancer.

Brachytherapy has become a widely used therapy in many countries during recent years, being successfully applied in 800 medical centers in the U.S. and Western Europe. But it is still far from being generally applied in Russia.

The RUSNANO project promotes import substitution in the field of high-tech medical products. Until recently microsources supplied by the Russian registered company, Bebig LLC, were produced in Germany by Eckert & Ziegler BEBIG. Since 2005 they have been used for over 7000 interventions at 21 medical centers in Russia. The Dubna complex is the sole full-cycle facility in Russia producing microsources for brachytherapy and will enable Bebig LLC to switch to domestic production in the near future.

Microsources are titanium capsules, which provide excellent biocompatibility and ultrasound imaging. The capsule contains a gold filament, which acts as an x-ray marker, and an iodine-125 radionuclide in the form of silver iodide. Modern high-tech production processes are located in clean rooms certified under ISO 8 and the Russian GOST R ISO 14644 standard. The isotopes are produced at the Atomic Reactor Research Institute in the town of Dimitrovgrad (Ulyanovsk Region).