Radioisotope company moves forward with CDMO plans, breaking ground on new manufacturing site in Wisconsin

As the radiopharmaceutical market has been attracting a healthy amount of attention and capital, one company is looking to plant its flag in the production of radioisotopes for use in therapeutics.

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, a Wisconsin-based radioisotope producer, is looking to build its CDMO arm with a new production facility to make radiopharmaceuticals used to treat cancer patients.

The new CDMO wing of the company will aim to provide collaborator companies with a wider range of development and commercial services as well as progress its in-house radiopharmaceutical programs.

The new facility is next to its current production facility in the city of Beloit, WI. The new 36,000-square-foot facility will aim to be up and running in late 2024 and produce some of its isotopes, including actinium-225 and copper-67.

According to an email from a Northstar spokesperson to Endpoints News, the company has around 300 employees and plans to hire more as a result of the expansion. However, the company did not disclose the price of the facility.

Stephen Merrick

NorthStar’s spokesperson also said that several companies have expressed interest in utilizing NorthStar’s CDMO services for patient dose manufacturing, with other companies interested in using NorthStar’s capabilities to facilitate therapeutic drug development efforts. In August, NorthStar was one of three manufacturers to contract with Aktis Oncology to make actinium-225, which the biotech uses in experimental radioligand therapies for cancer.

Stephen Merrick, NorthStar Medical CEO, said in a statement:

NorthStar’s CDMO will enable us to share our radiopharmaceutical development and commercialization expertise with pharmaceutical or biotechnology companies that may require additional infrastructure, resources or the specialized knowledge required for complex radiopharmaceutical development, to help them develop and deliver products with the potential to improve care for even more patients with serious disease.

The manufacturing facility plans to have dedicated suites for compounding and filling the pharmaceuticals as well as quality assurance and control services, analytical services and logistical areas for packing and shipping.

NorthStar is jumping into CDMO services as the market is getting hotter for radiopharmaceuticals, as both bigger names in the pharma industry and smaller biotechs are developing radiopharmaceutical assets.

In the summer, Berlin-based Ariceum Therapeutics, which was formed from taking along the radiopharmaceutical candidate as well as a team of researchers from Ipsen, secured a €25 million ($26.7 million) Series A.

For Novartis, the FDA approved its radioligand asset, known as Lu-PSMA-617 and now marketed as Pluvicto, for PSMA-positive metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer earlier this year. Novartis acquired the drug in its $2.1 billion buyout of Endocyte back in 2018.

And earlier this spring, Sequoia China led a $37 million Series A into Full-Life Technologies, a biotech headquartered in Shanghai, to develop a pipeline of radioactive cancer therapies.

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