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Zirconium is an abundant, corrosion-resistant metal used widely in industry, from nuclear fuel cladding to ceramics. Zirconium-89 is a synthetic radioisotope made for medical imaging, with a half-life of 3.3 days.
Such a long half-life is zirconium-89's defining advantage. It matches the slow movement of large molecules such as antibodies through the body, allowing them to be imaged by PET for up to a week, and its relatively low positron energy delivers high-sensitivity, high-resolution images. This makes it well suited to detailed imaging over several days.
Zirconium-89 is the leading isotope for immunoPET, the imaging of radiolabelled monoclonal antibodies across breast, colorectal, and other cancers. Studies are also investigating its use for labelling large biologics.
Zirconium-89 is produced by bombarding an yttrium-89 target with protons, but existing infrastructure is struggling to scale as demand for antibody-based therapeutics and immunoPET expands.
StandardX is developing accelerator-based production to supply zirconium-89 at the consistent purity and scale this growing field demands.