Mayo Clinic is partnering with Eclipse, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, to create a new company aimed at modernizing the development of drugs with radioactive ingredients.
The health system and its VC partner together are investing $6 million in the new company, Nucleus RadioPharma, which will be based in Mayo's home city of Rochester, Minn.
The company plans to develop technologies to carry out development, manufacturing and distribution of radiopharmaceuticals.
Nucleus RadioPharma's work is "going to be critical to lives of patients across the country and across the globe," said CEO Charles Conroy. Previously, Conroy was CEO of ARTMS Inc. a Canadian provider of technology for the production of radiopharmaceuticals.
Radiopharmaceutical treatments can be helpful in treating cancers. But they're only expensive and have short-lived radioactivity, meaning they must be produced daily, typically in small amounts, and sometimes for each individual patient. With the current supply-chain model, patients can wait over a month for treatment.
Being able to better manufacture the radiopharmaceuticals through Nucleus RadioPharma will help the Mayo Clinic more rapidly deliver them to patients, Cheryl Willman, executive director of Mayo Clinic Cancer Programs, said in the announcement.
It will also help the development and clinical testing of radiotherapies in the future, she said.
Nucleus RadioPharma expects to begin generating revenue next year and have 35 employees by year-end 2023. After that, the company expects to expand into other areas of the U.S., Conroy said.
