A new kid on the radiopharma block

Deals in radiopharmaceuticals keep coming thick and fast, and the latest concerns a new kid on the block, Perspective Therapeutics. This company was formerly known as Isoray, and used to have a device focus; but last month it sold off its brachytherapy business, and shortly afterwards licensed the Mayo Clinic’s lead-212 based PSMA-targeted radiotherapeutic for prostate cancer. Today brought a major endorsement in the form of Lantheus, which is paying $28m for an option on a separate lead-based Perspective asset, the SSTR2-targeting 212-Pb-VMT. Subject to others’ buy-in Lantheus is also to pay $33m for a 19.9% stake in Perspective, and the junior partner is acquiring Lentheus’s radiopharmaceuticals manufacturing plant in Somerset, New Jersey for an undisclosed price. 212-Pb is an alpha as well as beta emitter, but it’s SSTR2 that will ring bells: the same target is hit by RYZ101, an actinium-225 based alpha-emitter in development by RayzeBio, the biotech for which Bristol Myers Squibb paid $4.1bn last year. Point Biopharma, bought by Lilly for $1.4bn, also has an SSTR-targeting radionuclide, PNT2003, which uses the beta-emitter lutetium-177. After Novartis’s problems, locking in manufacturing capacity early is seen as essential in radiopharmaceuticals development.

Locking in radiopharma manufacturing

Source: company statements.