SHINE AND DEERFIELD CLOSE $150 MILLION FINANCING COMMITMENT TO SUPPORT DIAGNOSTIC AND THERAPEUTIC MEDICAL ISOTOPE MANUFACTURING
November 27, 2018 – New York, NY and Janesville, WI – SHINE Medical Technologies Inc. (SHINE), a Wisconsin-based company dedicated to being the world leader in the safe, clean, affordable production of medical isotopes, and Deerfield Management Company, a healthcare investment firm, announced today the closing of a definitive agreement providing a $150 million financing commitment to support diagnostic and therapeutic medical isotope manufacturing. The Company’s first product, molybdenum-99 (Mo-99), will address current chronic shortages of the isotope, which is currently relied on for 80% of all nuclear medicine procedures.
“We are enthusiastic about partnering with SHINE to help create a permanent and dependable solution to the industry’s Mo-99 shortage and to work on developing other medical isotopes for therapeutic use,” said Steve Hochberg, Partner at Deerfield. “We look forward to continuing to work with the talented SHINE team and supporting them as the company scales and executes to address this important need.”
Deerfield’s investment will be used for the construction of SHINE’s main production facility, which will start in the spring of 2019. The investment is tranched, based on SHINE achieving milestones. At full capacity, the SHINE facility will be able to supply over one third of global demand for Mo-99. The investment will also provide capital to ramp up operations prior to commencing commercial production of Mo-99, expected to begin in 2021.
“We are excited to sign this deal as we begin construction of our Janesville production facility,” said Greg Piefer, SHINE founder and CEO. “Deerfield is a world-leading healthcare investment firm and is a strong partner that provides important institutional validation of our business.”
Prior to signing the Deerfield agreement, SHINE also closed its Series B funding round, bringing in over $30M of investment through private investors.
“The Series B round was largely driven by the support of in-state investors and strategic partners. We are extremely grateful to know that the State of Wisconsin and our industry partners believe in the SHINE vision and opportunity,” said Todd Asmuth, President and CFO of SHINE.
Medical isotopes are radioisotopes that are used in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99) is a radioisotope that decays into the diagnostic imaging agent technetium 99m (Tc-99m). The workhorse of nuclear medicine, Tc-99m is used in more than 40 million medical imaging procedures each year, primarily in stress tests to diagnose heart disease and bone scans to stage cancer. SHINE was founded to deploy a safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly technology to produce a variety of medical isotopes, including Mo‑99. Roughly 1% of all Mo-99 in the world decays every hour, meaning it must be continuously produced. Current production is limited to only a handful of government-owned nuclear research reactors, the majority of which are overseas.
Based in Janesville, Wisconsin, SHINE deploys its safe, cost-effective and environmentally friendly fusion technology in a stepwise approach. Its systems are used to inspect industrial components in aerospace, defense, energy and other sectors. SHINE’s proprietary medical isotope production processes create non-carrier-added lutetium-177 and are expected to create molybdenum-99. In the future, SHINE plans to scale its fusion technology to help solve one of energy’s toughest hurdles by recycling nuclear waste. Through a purpose-driven and phased approach, SHINE aims to generate fusion power to deliver clean, abundant energy that could transform life on Earth. Want to learn more about SHINE? Follow us on social media @shinefusion and sign up for our email newsletter to follow us on our journey!
Media Contact: info@shinefusion.com
Deerfield is an investment management firm committed to advancing healthcare through investment, information and philanthropy. For more information about Deerfield, please visit www.deerfield.com.
