On 2014, “King Hamad university Hospital “established the first cyclotron and PETCT facility in the Kingdom of Bahrain and the site was able to produce sterile injectable radiopharmaceuticals. The facility was established to fulfill IAEA and European good manufacturer practice (GMP) guidelines for radiopharmaceuticals production. On 2015 the facility was certified as a European GMP site. March, 2015 the first routine production of 2-[18F] fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ([18F] FDG) successfully completed and patient injected with first dose locally produced.
“King Hamad university Hospital” cyclotron site equipped with 16.5 MeV PETtrace 800 GE cyclotron and Fastlab synthesizer which was installed at the initial stage. In addition, automatic dispenser to dispense the final product under sterile environment in vails for patient injections.
The routine production started with 18F- FDG which is the mostly used radiopharmaceutical for the diagnosis and staging of cancer. On 2016, a new synthesis module (Fastlab developer) was installed. Installation of this new module allow the facility to implement additional radiopharmaceuticals on routine basis to fulfill the clinical demand especially after starting the service in Bahrain oncology center. Hence, two new radiopharmaceuticals were added to the daily production list including 68Ga- DOTAT TOC for neuroendocrine tumor imaging and 18F-PSMA for prostate cancer patients. Implementation of those two tracers started only after process validation of each tracer to ensure that the final product is fulfilling the requirements of injectable radiopharmaceuticals according to European GMP.
Currently, upgrade of cyclotron is ongoing to install Gallium target for 68Ga radiopharmaceuticals production. This will be added value of the cyclotron facility to have 68Ga available onsite which was being produced using outside source Germanium/Gallium generator.
Imaging of patients post radiopharmaceuticals injection is being done by PET/CT machine and state of art PET/MR which installed June, 2019.
