Actinium Pharmaceuticals launches Actinium-225 focused strategic initative

Actinium Pharmaceuticals announced that it has launched a strategic initiative focused on the manufacture of the medical isotope Actinium-225 leveraging its propriety cyclotron-based method. Actinium’s intellectual property portfolio relating to its cyclotron-based production method includes 5 issued U.S. patents and 49 issued international patents as well as significant technical know-how. Ac-225 produced using Actinium’s method is highly pure and identical to the current gold-standard manufacturing method using a Thorium-229 generator but has the potential to be lower-cost at commercial scale and is a higher yielding approach. Specifically, Actinium’s Ac-225 based technology and production methods are grounded in several U.S. and International patents that cover the following areas: End-to-end solution including processing and recycling of Radium-226 starting material; Production of up to 100 mCi of Ac-225 per production cycle; Utilizes a medium energy cyclotron; Expected cost 10 – 20 times lower than currently available material. Currently, the majority of Ac-225 is supplied by the United States Department of Energy who derives Ac-225 from the natural decay of thorium-229 from so-called “thorium-cows”. Actinium Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has maintained supply agreements with the DOE since 2009. The DOE has stated that it is exploring the generation of new thorium cows and production via a cyclotron. In addition, multiple government and non-governmental entities globally are focused on Ac-225 production using various methods and have represented that clinical grade Ac-225 could be available over the next several years. However, at this time, the majority of material available is research grade and there is limited availability of clinical grade Ac-225 outside of the material supplied by the DOE. The relative scarcity of Ac-225 has led to rapidly escalating procurement costs in recent years.