I'm pretty exhausted. Christophe wrote me an email. No, he wasn't asking me to drink expensive European cocktails in a trendy bar, he was just answering a question I had about whether or not the protons in his cyclotron were fast enough that he had to take relativistic effects into account. No, it wasn't a euphemism.

Ok, time for a back explanation:

I went to visit a couple of cyclotron facilities with the colleague of my sister's husband's father. The only reason I went was because the guy doesn't speak French and my sister's husband's father thought it might be nice to have someone along who did. He'd get a quasi-french-speaking companion, I'd get to see some weird labs and maybe eat a free lunch. I wondered what I should wear... I figured the American engineer would be wearing khakis, a blue dress shirt, and a pair of sensible brown shoes. This is exactly what he was wearing, though he also had an Land's End jacket and a leather hat from LL Bean. So Colorado. I figured the french engineers would be wearing black dress pants, dark sweaters, and dress shoes, which is also exactly what they were wearing.

I wasn't that much help... they would be like, "What is the word for airlock? What is the word for proton beam?" We managed to figure things out somehow. I did help at the beginning when we were lost in the hospital, and at the end when we were drinking wine and eating fine french cuisine.

We arrived at the hospital and ended up in radiopharmaceuticals. This is where we met our poor, lovelorn nurse and she told us that the cyclotron lab was upset with them because they'd recently lost a big contract with the hospital (see last entry). When we got to the bottom of the sketchy spiral staircase, she rang the bell for us and Christophe answered it. He had just sent someone out to find us. The nurse asked him how he was doing and tried to make some light banter, but he clearly had a lot of things on his mind. "We should get together to talk about the proposal," he said, 100% business. She laughed, but he wasn't laughing.

The company makes short-lived radionuclides that they mix with a glucose analogue. This mixture is injected into the veins of cancer patients, with the radionuclides acting as tracer particles. The glucose analogue is taken up by all cells which are making ATP out of glucose, but the faster the cells are metabolizing, the more they take up, and thus the more radioactive tracer particles enter them. As you might guess, cancer cells are rapidly metabolizing. When you scan the patient for radioactivity (gamma rays), the tumor lights up like a beacon, and you can take a detailed, 3-D image of it.


Thanks for the image, Wikipedia.

A cyclotron is a machine shaped like a hamburger with two giant D-shaped magnets inside. They use the magnetic field to accelerate protons to high speeds and then they collide the protons with a target made of water with oxygen-18, a more rare isotope of oxygen. The O-18 turns into Fluorine-18, which is radioactive, and which they use as the tracer in the body. It is well-suited for this purpose because it decays on the order of hours, so the patient doesn't have to be exposed to radiation for prolonged periods. The downside to this is that they have to start making the doses at one in the morning. At about 7 am the doses are shipped out, and by about 11 am they are administered to the patient. They have to calculate the rate of decay extremely precisely so that the dose will be correct at the exact moment that it is administered. This means that Christophe has to get to work every day at about midnight. Kills his chances to date our nurse, I must imagine.

"I used to work out at [city with a reputation for being sketchy], and for a year I didn't have my driver's license.... long story.... so I had to take the train and then walk to the facility. But I never had any problems," he said.

Everyone clearly wanted to hear the story, but Christophe did not indulge us. The handsome young man from finance who took us to lunch afterward told us that in order to have your license revoked for a year you'd have to have done something... quite... He raised his eyebrow and did not finish. Clearly if you run a lab filled with protons whirling at 1/5 the speed of light and giant tubs of nuclear waste being produced every week you'd have to drive fast and dangerously and gel your hair, too.

Almost everyone in the labs that we visited was a good-looking, late-20s-early-30s male, which was not at all what I expected. Nicholas, another chemist, told us that the labs have a pretty high turnover rate because of the totally insane hours. The economics behind this kind of operation is absolutely mind-boggling. The facility cost 11 million euros to build. Each tiny bottle of O-18-enriched water costs 2000 euros. Add to that the cost of running the giant cyclotron (in a vault), the cost of disposing of nuclear waste all the time, and the cost of keeping everything in the lab sterile, and you can see why cancer tests cost astronomical amounts. Even a small fluctuation in consumer demand can put a company dangerously close to disaster.

Even more worrisome has been the recent tendency of doctors to cheat on the dosage: They'll order 10 doses for 12 patients, or, in the worst cases, 5 doses for 10 patients. In order to compensate, they'll give the patients the doses well before the scheduled injection time to take advantage of the higher level of radiation.

That's when you hope that your doctor is good at arithmetic.

What amazing technology! I also have to compliment you on your wonderful writing. It was a fascinating read, and as much as I love all things science, my brain has a hard time understanding the complexities of things like radiopharmaceuticals. You made it very understandable.

Thank you for sharing.
» Amelie on 2013-02-21 04:54:50

Note to self: do not get cancer treatments in France.

Also, I second what Amelie said. That was surprisingly not painful to read, considering it was about stuff that usually goes right over my head!
» randomjunk on 2013-02-21 09:18:19

But if he were to e-mail you requesting a night of expensive European drinks, you would saaaay...
» Unicornasaurus on 2013-02-22 12:18:17

I wish I paid more attention in Chem.. You sort of lost me somewhere while counting to 16 oxygen molecules.
» Nuttz on 2013-02-22 08:44:36

Sad... Although, who knows, maybe getting to talk to you about 100% business is more his style than trendy bars.
» jinyu on 2013-02-25 11:24:55

Sorry, you do not have permission to comment.

If you are a member, try logging in again or accessing this page here.