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Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson today announced steps to expand the Energy Department's capacity to provide an isotope extracted from leftover radioactive materials used in nuclear activities to be used in clinical trials for the treatment of several forms of cancer. Plans call for increasing the supply of the isotope Bismuth-213, a decay product of Uranium-233 currently in storage at the Department's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and make it available for use in an expanded cancer treatment research project.

"This is an innovative way to utilize legacy materials from nuclear production for positive uses," said Secretary Richardson. "The use of this isotope for cancer treatment has shown promise and with an increased availability of the isotope these research efforts can be expanded."

In the near-term, as funds are available, the Department plans to increase the supply of the isotope by up to 30 percent over the next year and hopes to double its supply by 2002. Initially, the Department will use the existing extraction and process line at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). In order to double its supply, however, additional funding from Congress will be required to install a new processing line at ORNL. The Department is also initiating some longer-term actions that will allow for future decisions on the extraction of additional isotopes from the larger quantities of Uranium-233 at Oak Ridge.

The proposal announced today builds on the clinical trials in the use of Bismuth-213 that the Department has supported for the last two years primarily at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. These trials have explored treatments for serious forms of cancer, including acute myologenous leukemia. As additional supply is made available, researchers hope to use the isotope to develop treatments for other serious cancers, including cancer of pancreas, kidneys and other organs. This research is in the first stage of clinical trials and has shown very promising results.

As opposed to chemotherapy and other forms of treatment, this procedure, called radio-immunotherapy, directs the treatment to the tissue that needs to be destroyed and as such, minimizes impact to healthy surrounding tissue. The alpha-emitting isotope is linked to monoclonal antibodies, peptides or other biological agents that can travel directly to the site of the tumor within the body. Moreover, with radioimmunotherapy, the patient can also be treated with much smaller quantities of radioisotopes than other forms of treatment available today.

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R-00-158