Tom Haraldsen
The City Journals
Though it’s been more than 80 years since the Manhattan Project that led to the creation of the first atomic bombs that ended World War II, the science of isotopes remains explorable in many ways. Leading that exploration is a company based in West Valley City called Nusano, a privately held physics enterprise working to supply stability and innovation to the radioisotope marketplace.
Chris Lowe, company CEO, said the origin of Nusano was “to address the underlying problems that have plagued national research labs and countries’ programs for decades — the limitations of isotope production and the basic separation properties of the physics involved with isotopes.”
Isotopes are a species of atoms of a chemical element with the same atomic number but differing atomic mass or mass numbers. There are almost 3,500 types of isotopes known for all elements, which have nearly identical chemical behavior but very different physical properties.
“Our scientific founder is Dr. Glenn Rosenthal, a researcher at UCLA, who made the first sketch of a machine that could help accomplish this separation, and ultimately that led to the formation of Nusano,” Lowe said. That sketch was drawn on a cocktail napkin during a conversation, not the first time napkin drawings have led to scientific discoveries.
Lowe said over the eight years of research that followed, the ion source has accumulated more than 23,000 hours of experience with the separation process, which allowed Nusano to develop a number of technologies now online or coming online over the next few months.
Isotopes “don’t really care what they’re used for,” Lowe said with a smile. “They are the foundation of some very breakthrough treatments in the cancer field, specifically radioligand therapy that can help diagnose, monitor and treat various cancers. There are a couple of hundred drugs currently under clinical research for cancer, and our role is to be able to enable those researchers to have 40 to 50 different isotopes to choose from, rather than just two or three as has been the case. What started as a challenge for us nearly a decade ago has turned into a tremendous opportunity to impact mankind in a variety of ways over the coming years.”
Scott Larrivee, head of marketing and communications for Nusano, said the ion source powers laser beams that, once accelerated, “hit the target and a radioisotope is emitted that can be transformed into more stable forms. Every chemical element has one or more radioactive isotopes.”
I asked Lowe why isotopes have remained a bit of a mystery for decades.
“There are two answers to that question,” he said. “First, it’s important to realize that we don’t change the laws of physics or chemistry. We just execute them at a level of efficiency that previously had not been conceived as possible. The limitations on being able to make them in a sustainable fashion also limited our research on them. And as that changed, our research has naturally matured. Until we found a sustainable supply chain for isotopes, researchers had moved on to something else. Nusano is contributing to the renaissance for using certain isotopes in certain industries.”
Nusano is located in a 170,000-square-foot headquarters on Lake Park Boulevard. It currently employs about 160 and plans to ramp up to nearly 250 by the end of the year. Lowe said locating in West Valley City made sense for a number of reasons, including a stable workforce (lots of local universities with students who’ve studied science or nuclear engineering), close proximity to Salt Lake City International Airport, which he calls “the best that I’ve ever come across in terms of dealing with challenges like inclement weather or other possible delays;" and partners in West Valley City and along the Wasatch Front that have embraced the company.
He said the domestic nature of Nusano’s business is also a plus, where historically, 90 percent to 95 percent of material used in isotope research has come from Russia. The Nusano technology “will allow us to be the first-ever 100 percent domestic supply chain to manufacture these isotopes. Some of the raw materials will actually be mined in Utah, and that makes us really excited as well.”
As Nusano grows, there will be a strong and positive effect on the city’s industrial sector. Ten other companies have either signed leases or have started construction on their own facilities near Nusano, part of the ecosystem Lowe sees growing in West Valley City.
“I truly do believe that when we look back on this 10 to 20 years from now, you know, the world will actually look to this area and say, this was the area that helped to stabilize and kind of jump start the renaissance of isotope applications,” he said. “The ripple effect of businesses cannot be understated in any industry that's creative and innovative.”