Janesville-based nuclear technology company SHINE Medical Technologies said Wednesday it has closed on $80 million in Series C financing.
SHINE is building a facility in Janesville for its production of molybdenum-99, or Mo-99, which decays into technetium‑99m used in more than 40 million medical imaging procedures each year.
The Janesville facility is expected to be completed in 2021 with commercial-scale isotope production starting in 2022. SHINE has off-take agreements with three of the world’s largest Mo-99 distributors for the future supply of Mo-99, according to the announcement.
The funding round was led by Fidelity Management and Research Co. and included funding from existing investors in the company.
“This funding round will help SHINE’s continuing efforts to commercialize vital diagnostic and therapeutic isotopes that will be created by our revolutionary, responsible production technologies,” Greg Piefer, founder and CEO of SHINE, stated in the announcement. “The opportunity for SHINE to fill an urgent market need by creating a more robust supply of these isotopes was evident once again as patient supplies were being disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic. This equity round is an affirmation by high-quality investors of our long-term business strategy and the ongoing success of our efforts to build a U.S. production platform that will produce a reliable isotope supply, fill an urgent market need and meet the needs of tens of millions of patients each year.”
Last fall, the company announced plans to build a similar facility on a yet-to-be-determined site in Europe. When the European facility begins production, SHINE will be capable of producing more than two-thirds of the global patient demand for Mo-99. Europe is the second-largest market in the world for using the Mo-99 isotope at roughly 10 million tests per year, Piefer previously said.
Since being founded in 2010, SHINE has raised close to $300 million in capital. The company in October 2019 secured $50 million from Los Angeles investment firm Oaktree Capital Management.
SHINE is also working to commercialize Lu-177, a therapeutic isotope currently used to treat neuroendocrine cancers. Piefer also is founder and former president of Monona-based Phoenix Nuclear Labs, a sister company to SHINE that makes Piefer’s design of a neutron generator.
