No wonder that this stuff is not being used much in research. Look at the price. If these 2 companies can cut the price drastically it could possibly become a major innovation. For myself I would bet that the industry is well aware of this.
'Voyageur has partnered with Rain Cage Carbon Inc, a company with new innovative carbon capture technology. This technology extracts CO2 from hydrocarbon exhaust streams. The carbon produced is a mix of carbon allotropes consisting of carbon nanotubes, carbon 60, carbon 70 and carbon 120 fullerenes. Currently, industry creates fullerene in plasma chambers at very low production rates and extremely high costs. One tonne of fullerene ranges from USD200,000,000 to USD300,000,000 per tonne. Rain Cage has broken the price barrier substantially and we have developed new molecules from this process in the form of endohedral fullerene. This has led to Voyageur creating an new drug pipeline of Nano Scale Endohedral Fullerene contrast imaging drugs for MRI, CT and Radiopharmaceuticals.
Endohedral fullerenes are more advanced than regular fullerene. Endohedral fullerene is incredibly rare for commercial applications due to the complex and precise conditions required for their synthesis, making them one of the most valuable materials in nanotechnology. In 2015 a company named Designer Carbon Materials, an Oxford-based scientific startup, sold its first 200 micrograms of nitrogen atom-based endohedral fullerenes for £22,000 ($33,400) ($167 million per gram). Rain Cage Carbon has developed a method to create these high value molecules at scale and low cost. An industry first.
Voyageur has partnered with Applied Pharmaceutical Innovations (API), a nonprofit, Province of Alberta government-funded organization that has previous fullerene drug development experience. We are working with some of Canada’s top research scientists to create a new line of endohedral fullerene drugs for radiology. The amazing properties of fullerene enhance the properties of the atoms placed inside the molecules, and their unique structure allows for other drugs and chemicals to be linked to the molecule. This allows the development of targeted drug delivery of contrast agents to precise organs in the body or direct to specific tumours."