The multi-million-euro machine that can produce a radioactive substance used to diagnose cancer will finally start being used early next year after lying dormant at the Life Sciences Park for years, according to Malta Enterprise.
The machine, called a cyclotron, has been relocated to another site within the Life Sciences Park until the necessary works are carried out, the spokesperson said.
“Malta Enterprise is currently working to ensure that, upon completion, both the site and the cyclotron will be ready for use. Pending works underway on this facility, the cyclotron was temporarily located to another site within the same Life Sciences Park. This to ensure the maximum protection.
"Once works are complete, the equipment will be installed. In fact, due to the specialised nature of the device, General Electric was tasked with the relocation," the spokesperson said.
The cyclotron was stored at the Life Science Park.“The cyclotron was never in operation and is still stored in its original state,” a spokesperson for Malta Enterprise said.
In March last year, Times of Malta reported that the cyclotron had been lying unused and “still in boxes” at the Life Sciences Park.
Cyclotrons are used to produce a radioactive tracer for nuclear imaging during PET/CT scans. This enables patients, primarily those suffering from cancer, to be diagnosed and the effectiveness of their therapy to be monitored. Since Malta’s cyclotron is not in use, the country had been importing tracer from a company called Curium in Rome.
The radioactive tracer has a short shelf-life and must be used within hours of being produced in the Rome cyclotron. It cannot be stored, so it has to be ordered to arrive in time for scheduled medical appointments.
Hundreds of hospital appointments postponed
However, according to multiple sources, over the past few years there have been several occasions when the ordered tracer consignment was not sent from Rome, forcing the postponement of hundreds of hospital appointments and, as a result, many surgeries.
Sources said that, due to the limited supply of tracer from Rome, Mater Dei Hospital also imported tracer from Turkey.
According to sources, the cyclotron was purchased for €4 million by Vitals Global Healthcare, which received more than €50 million from the government to run three state hospitals in 2016.
The cyclotron belongs to the government of Malta- Malta Enterprise spokesperson
In 2018, Vitals transferred its hospitals concession to the US group Steward Health Care after facing financial difficulties.
The cyclotron itself became the property of Mtrace, a company that was owned by Steward and a certain Andrea Marsili.
Marsili is also the general manager and managing director of Curium, the Rome company that supplied Mater Dei with the tracer.
Throughout this time, the cyclotron was never used.
On January 8 this year, the government-owned Malta Enterprise purchased Steward’s 237,000 shares – the majority – in Mtrace for a nominal fee of €1 each, according to the Malta Business Registry.
The rest of the shares, 12,500, were retained by Marsili.
A spokesperson for Steward Health Care confirmed that it had transferred the cyclotron asset to the government of Malta and that it “has made no profit from this transaction”.
A Malta Enterprise spokesperson said: “The cyclotron belongs to the government of Malta.”