Armenia intends to become the regional center in the sphere of nuclear medicine

Yerevan/Mediamax/. Scientific-Technical Director of the Center of Ion-Beam Therapy of Heidelberg University (Germany), Doctor-Professor Thomas Haberer stated in Yerevan today that “the Armenian oncological center of excellence will provide a wide spectrum of opportunities for development”.

“The Center will assist not only healthcare, but also development of the infrastructure for research”, Doctor Haberer stated. He visits Armenia in order to present the world experience and the practice in the sphere of nuclear medicine.

Executive Director of the National Competitiveness Foundation of Armenia Pegor Papazian in his turn stated that “Armenia has all chances to become the regional leader in the sphere of nuclear medicine”.

Earlier this year, Pegor Papazian told in an interview to Mediamax that the program consisted of three components.

“In order to realize the first of those components - the radiopharmaceutical production center, we mobilized €5mln in financing in 2010, €1.7 of which was provided by the government of Belgium as a grant. This year, the government of Armenia will allocate €3mln for construction of the center’s building and to cover initial operating costs. The center will produce pharmaceuticals needed for diagnosing and treating common forms of cancer. These radiopharmaceuticals cannot be effectively imported, since they lose their effectiveness within hours or even minutes of being produced and so they need to be used immediately after production. The center for the production of radiopharmaceuticals will not target profits but rather to simply cover its own costs and enable effective public-private partnerships.

The second component is the diagnostic center, which will act as one of the main customers of the radiopharmaceutical production center, and the third component is a new clinic, which will become a center for the treatment of oncological diseases. These second and the third components are intended to be private entities for which we are now in the process of attracting investors.

All three components together will constitute the Armenian Center of Excellence in Oncology and will be located in the Alikhanyan National Science Lab (formerly the Yerevan Physics Institute) .The construction of the first component will begin this year. In March, we will announce an international tender for it architectural design.

We are implementing this project in collaboration with the Belgian company IBA Molecular, which is now assembling the main piece of equipment for the center: a cyclotron particle accelerator. The construction of the radiopharmaceutical production center has to be completed in time to receive and install the accelerator as soon as it is ready.

Simultaneously, we are cooperating with potential investors in order to have them on board within 2-3 years, following the arrival of the accelerator in Armenia”, Pegor Papazian was saying then.