Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/5/2015
Perma-Fix Environmental Services announced this week the new leadership team for its medical isotopes subsidiary, including new Perma-Fix Medical S.A. CEO Steve Belcher and Executive Vice President John Climaco. Perma-Fix had been looking for more medical isotopes experience in its leadership team to lead the subsidiary. “We are extremely pleased to announce the appointments of such experienced and proven industry executives to the senior management team and Board of Directors of Perma-Fix Medical S.A,” Perma-Fix CEO Lou Centofanti said in a statement. “These appointments come at a key inflection point in the development of our medical technology. Given our progress, it was important to bring in additional resources to the senior management team with the necessary industry knowledge that will allow us to maximize our potential.”
Both Belcher and Climaco have been serving as advisors to Perma-Fix Medical as it maneuvers through the scale-up demonstrations and regulatory pathway. Belcher has served on the advisory board since June 2014, and he previously founded Triad Isotopes, a medical isotope company with 60 pharmacies and $270 million in sales as well as a NorthStar Medical supply agreement partner. Climaco has served on Perma-Fix Environment’s board of directors since October 2013, and since 2012, he has also served on the board of directors for the Digirad Corporation, a Perma-Fix Medical financing partner. “As advisors to Perma-Fix Medical S.A., both Steve Belcher and John Climaco have been instrumental in helping advance our process through key technical milestones, and assisting us in securing valuable strategic partnerships,” Centofanti said. “Moreover, each of these individuals brings experience from both a distributor and customer perspective.”
Centofanti, who previously served as CEO and Chairman for the subsidiary, will continue as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Perma-Fix Medical also announced the appointments of Gary Kugler, a nuclear industry veteran, and Ewa Szlachetka, a Partner at the law firm of Wierzbowski Evesheds, to Perma-Fix Medical’s S.A.’s Supervisory Board, the company said.
Perma-Fix Achieves Successful Scale-up of Mo-99 Technology
Perma-Fix Medical SA has achieved a successful scale-up of its process to produce Technetium-99m, the company also announced this week. Earlier this year, Perma-Fix said that it needed to reconfigure its production process after realizing the market demand for the medical isotope used in millions of procedures annually called for a larger design. According to the company, the new scaled-up version withstood higher levels of radiation, up to 2 curies, while still producing usable doses of Tc-99m. “Achieving these results at higher radiation levels is an important milestone for the company,” Perma-Fix CEO Lou Centofanti said in a statement. “At the 2 curie level, we now meet the industry requirements in many emerging markets that are in need of a decentralized and stable supply chain. Moreover, we are moving forward with additional demonstrations, which we believe will reinforce the strength of our groundbreaking technology at even higher radiation levels in order to accommodate North American and European customer preferences.”
Perma-Fix is one of several companies vying for market position in the Technetium-99m market, a medical isotope used in millions of procedures annually. With Canada set to stop government spending in 2016 on the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor, one of the world’s largest suppliers of molybdenum-99 and technetium-99m, the medical isotope industry is expecting a shortage in the market in the coming years. NRU’s anticipated shutdown has led to a slew of startups looking to fill the lucrative medical isotope void—eight-to-nine companies have already sent the Nuclear Regulatory Commission letters of intent to submit construction authorization licenses for a potential Mo-99 production facility.
