As interest in the cancer-fighting potential of radiopharmaceutical drugs continues to swell, companies have unleashed a spate of investments in recent years to manufacture the nuclear medicines and secure supplies of the radioactive isotopes underpinning them.
Now, Bill Gates-founded TerraPower Isotopes (TPI)—which produces actinium-225 (ac-225) derived from legacy U.S. nuclear material—is laying out nearly half a billion dollars as it seeks to become the “premier global distributor” of the rare and promising ingredient.
TPI on Wednesday unveiled plans to build a flagship ac-225 manufacturing facility in Philadelphia’s Bellwether District. The upcoming East Coast plant, backed by a $450 million investment, will join another U.S. TPI site in Everett, Washington, where the company said it is expanding capacity as well.
The new site in Pennsylvania will be built out across 250,000 square feet and is expected to commence production in 2029, a representative for TPI told Fierce. The project will also create 225 permanent positions at the site over the next three years, plus approximately 500 construction jobs during the build-out phase, the representative explained.
The new plant has also received a $10 million investment from the state itself, the representative added, explaining that TPI weighed more than 350 possible plant locations before settling on Philadelphia for its proximity to key infrastructure and the nearby life sciences ecosystem.
Once the Washington expansion and new Philadelphia facility come online, TPI expects to increase its production capacity 20-fold and become the world’s top distributor of ac-225, according to a March 17 press release.
“This new facility is a testament to the demand for actinium-225 as part of the growing industry which is transforming how cancer is treated,” Scott Claunch, TPI’s president, said in a statement.
TerraPower President and CEO Chris Levesque added that the plant will “help us increase the global supply of actinium-225 and increase access for researchers and drug developers who are advancing new cancer treatments.”
There is heavy R&D interest in the field of radiopharmaceuticals, which wed a radioisotope with a targeting molecule to home in on and destroy cancerous tissue. Nuclear medicine can be used for diagnostic purposes, as well.
Still, companies have seen limited commercial success with the class of drugs, excluding Novartis, which currently boasts two approved radioligand therapies in Lutathera and Pluvicto. The meds are cleared to treat neuroendocrine tumors and prostate cancer, respectively.
Novartis’ pair of commercial radiopharmaceuticals utilize the radioisotope lutetium-177 (Lu-177), although Sven Van Den Berghe, CEO of Belgian radiopharmaceutical player PanTera, told Fierce in an interview last year that “[t]he next revolution is coming right after [Lu-177], which is actinium-225.” He noted that ac-225, which holds great promise in oncology treatment but has yet to make its way into a marketed product, requires a completely different production route than lutetium.
PanTera is partnered with TPI. In the summer of 2023, the two companies joined forces to wed their production approaches with the goal of increasing global availability of ac-225.
TPI’s Philadelphia outlay joins a growing roster of radiopharmaceutical manufacturing projects that have originated from suppliers, up-and-coming drug developers and Novartis itself.
In fact, the Swiss drug giant outlined two new planned radiopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities in Florida and Texas in February, which fall under the broader $23 billion U.S. investment the company unveiled in 2025.
With those new sites, Novartis will soon boast a total of five for radiopharmaceuticals in the U.S.
Novartis is also looking at the potential of ac-225 and earlier this year struck a deal with Niowave for a scalable supply of the specialized ingredient. Niowave is supplying its ac-225 radioisotope to AstraZeneca as well, with the partners in December locking in a 10-year agreement.
TPI has been striking actinium supply deals of its own, such as last June’s tie-up with Ratio Therapeutics to furnish the biotech with ac-225 for its pipeline of targeted cancer medicines.