Investor seeks to put up anti-cancer vials-maker in city

A doctor attends to a patient at a cancer centre in Nairobi. FILE PHOTO | NMG 

By JAMES KARIUKI

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Summary

• Regulatory filings by investor Advanced Molecular Imaging Ltd indicate the production facility, if approved, will be erected at Nairobi’s Emirates Business Park and has been assigned a nominal investment value of Sh20 million.
• The project will entail construction of a special room with one-metre thick walls where the Cyclotron tank and its accompanying machinery will be installed. Its operations will be conducted from an adjacent room via a computerised network.

A cyclotron machine to manufacture Fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) vials, a medical product used in radiotherapy rooms to treat cancer, is set to be installed in Nairobi.

Regulatory filings by investor Advanced Molecular Imaging Ltd indicate the production facility, if approved, will be erected at Nairobi’s Emirates Business Park and has been assigned a nominal investment value of Sh20 million.

Cancer Care Kenya medical director N. Adamali, neuro-radiologist Alfred Odhiambo, Kenya Society of Hemato-oncology chairperson Catherine Nyongesa, clinical oncology and palliative medicine specialist the late Eliud Njuguna and M.P. Shah Hospital’s Social Service League chairman Manoj Shah gave a nod to the project.

“They have recommended the necessity of addressing cancer related problems through the introduction of a FDG Cyclotron facility in Nairobi,” said the Environmental Impact Assessment report.

READ: Kenya closer to setting up East Africa’s top cancer hospital

The project will entail construction of a special room with one-metre thick walls where the Cyclotron tank and its accompanying machinery will be installed. Its operations will be conducted from an adjacent room via a computerised network.

The FGD vial (fluorinated glucose) is injected into a patient where cancerous cells quickly consume the FD sugar creating a (radio) trace of the infected tissue area that is then detected by a Positron Emission Tomography (PET) scanner.

The project’s location is informed by proximity to airports to facilitate easy and swift transfer to hospitals providing the service as FDG vials are highly perishable.