Sichuan Advances Cluster-Based Breakthroughs in Nuclear Medicine, Leveraging "One Chain, Four Poles" to Accelerate Clinical Translation and Deployment

At the 2026 Nuclear Technology Application and Nuclear Medicine Industry Innovation Development Conference held in Mianyang, Sichuan, participants focused on the strategic emerging industry track of deep integration between nuclear technology and modern medicine. As a key vehicle for developing new quality productive forces, Sichuan's nuclear medicine industry, relying on its long-accumulated advantages in scientific research and reactor irradiation resources, continues to expand in scale; according to the China Isotope & Radiation Association, Sichuan's nuclear medicine output value is projected to surpass the 10 billion yuan mark in 2026.

In the fields of basic raw materials and therapeutic equipment, Sichuan possesses outstanding advantages in resource security and manufacturing concentration. More than 80% of the nation's medical isotopes rely on reactor irradiation for production, while the relevant reactor resources currently owned by Sichuan account for half of the national total, steadily supplying over 50% of the nation's medical isotope raw materials. In terms of therapeutic equipment, Mianyang, as the only domestic industrial base that brings together all categories of nuclear medicine equipment—electron, photon, proton, and neutron—has successively pushed the world's first X-Flash radiotherapy device through type testing and moved the first domestically produced 30 megaelectronvolt (MeV) medium-to-high-energy medical cyclotron toward mass production; on the radiopharmaceutical side, Chengdu has gathered 33 key enterprises and more than 70 nuclear drug candidates under research, and the first domestically approved and marketed yttrium-90 (Yttrium-90, $^{90}\text{Y}$) microsphere injection has achieved domestic production in Chengdu.

To open up a full-lifecycle collaborative channel, Sichuan has established a differentiated industrial layout of “one chain, four poles.” Leshan, leveraging its irradiation advantages, is building a medical isotope production pole; the core equipment of the world's highest-power solution-type medical isotope production reactor has been put in place, and upon reaching full capacity, its annual production capacity for molybdenum-99 (Molybdenum-99, $^{99}\text{Mo}$) and iodine-131 (Iodine-131, $^{131}\text{I}$) will reach the 100,000-curie level; Chengdu focuses on radiopharmaceutical R&D and translation, with the Tianfu Nuclear Medicine Characteristic Industrial Park linking with the soon-to-be-operational West China International Cancer Treatment Center to form a research-application closed loop; Mianyang is deeply engaged in nuclear medicine equipment development, and the CGN Medical Isotope Base utilizes a 30MeV accelerator to achieve large-scale mass production of nuclides such as germanium-68 (Germanium-68, $^{68}\text{Ge}$); Luzhou, relying on the Zhongshan Laboratory led by two academicians, focuses on the development of targeted theranostics (Theranostics) nuclear drugs.

In terms of policy planning and clinical implementation, the conference officially released Sichuan Province's "15th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Nuclear Medicine Industry," which specifies achieving autonomous supply of more than 10 mainstream medical isotopes by 2027 and striving to build the world's largest medical isotope production base and a nationally leading nuclear medicine center by 2030. At present, the pace of clinical translation is comprehensively accelerating. Yunke Pharmaceutical's self-developed yttrium-90 production line with an annual capacity of 10,000 curies is expected to reduce the cost per treatment to one-tenth of that of imported products; the annual nuclear medicine diagnosis and treatment volume at the Affiliated Hospital of Southwest Medical University has exceeded 16,000 patient visits, and its self-developed Class 1 new drug for bone metastasis, TBM-001, has been approved for clinical trials, marking that "Made in Sichuan" high-end nuclear medicine solutions are accelerating their benefit to a broad population of cancer patients.