Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/12/2015
Perma-Fix Medical doubled the scale-up of its process to produce Technetium-99m only a week after announcing it had reached an initial milestone in its design, the company 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 can withstand high levels of radiation, up to four curies, while still producing usable doses of Tc-99m. This milestone comes only a week after achieving a radiation limit of two curies. “Following our recent success at the 2 curie level, we have already attracted significant interest from within the industry—further validating the significance of our process,” Perma-Fix Environmental CEO Lou Centofanti said in a statement. “Given our latest success at the 4 curie level, and near term plans to scale up even further, we are moving forward aggressively with our plans to formalize additional partnerships, prepare for regulatory submission, and, ultimately, commence commercialization of the process.”
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.
Shareholders Approve 2015 Stock Option Plan
Shareholders of Perma-Fix Medical, meanwhile, approved this week the 2015 stock option plan that would enable the sale of 220,000 shares of stock in the subsidiary. At this point, Perma-Fix has a 64 percent ownership of the subsidiary, but following the sale of this stock option and the $1 million investment from the Digirad Corporation, Perma-Fix would only own 51.9 percent of the subsidiary, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing this week. The Digirad investment, though, is still subject to the execution of a definitive agreement and other conditions, although Digirad and Perma Fix have signed a letter of intent. Perma-Fix has focused on raising capital so as to continue to scale up its production design, as well as prepare for the regulatory approval process that awaits in the United States and in Europe.
