France Australia collaboration in nuclear medicine and biology: 10 years of success

Full text: In 1992, a collaboration in Nuclear Biomedicine was initiated with the support of the French Embassy in Australia. From a meeting held in Sydney that year, the following 3 objectives were decided: 1. Development of new radiopharmaceuticals. This subject involved the design, synthesis and radiolabelling with positron emitters (carbon-11, fluorine-18, bromine-76) for positron tomography (PET) and with iodine-123 for single photon tomography (SPET) of novel ligands and their radiopharmacological evaluation. 2. Improvement of instrumentation and data processing: measurement of input function, data analysis of medical images, motion detection /correction. 3. Development of clinical investigations in the fields of diagnosis and metabolic radiotherapy of melanoma, assessment of myocardial viability, studies of neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disorders. The form of the collaboration took advantage of the expertises and resources in each country. During 1992-2002 period, 11 centers from our 2 countries collaborated: a. from France: CEA-SHFJ (Orsay), INSERM U316 (Tours), CERMEP (Lyon) CEA-LETI (Grenoble), Centre J. PERRIN (Clermont-Ferrand), CHU (Nantes): CHU (Brest). b. from Australia: Radiopharmaceutical Division ANSTO, Menai, Centre for PET Austin Hospital, Melbourne, PET and Nuclear Medicine, RPAH, Sydney, Nuclear Medicine Westmead Hospital, Sydney, This scientific cooperation took the following forms: exchanges of information, visits of scientists, research and publication on joint projects and seminars. Specifically, the Orsay group collaborated with centers from Australia to develop and characterize new radiotracers and radiopharmaceuticals for research or clinical use and to establish protocols to investigate physiological and pathological mechanisms in humans or animals, especially in the area of neurotransmission (neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders). As main results of these collaborations, 3 main subjects were achieved and followed by articles published in well recognized scientific journals