Nuclear medicine firm Shine Technologies raises $240M
Nuclear medicine firm Shine Technologies has raised $240 million in new funding, the company announced Thursday.
South African and American surgeon, researcher and billionaire entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, and his company NantWorks led the funding round with participation from several others. He also will join the company’s board of directors in conjunction with the investment.
Janesville, Wisconsin-based Shine said the money will help it to advance commercial fusion technology across its portfolio of products and services. The company operates one of the largest Lu-177 production facilities in North America, supplying radioisotopes that power targeted cancer therapies and diagnostic imaging.
The sizable investment comes after Shine in January completed its acquisition of Lantheus’ SPECT business.
"Fusion energy is one of the most important technologies humanity will ever develop; it will forever change how we power our species, and is already having major impact across advanced manufacturing, healthcare and recycling," Greg Piefer, founder and CEO of Shine, said in a statement Feb. 26. "Dr. Soon-Shiong is a visionary who has spent his career turning breakthrough science into products that have made the world better. We are honored to have him as a partner."
Others participating in the funding round included Fidelity Management & Research Company, Sumitomo Corporation of Americas, Pelican Energy Partners, Deerfield Management and Oaktree Capital Management. NantWorks is based in Culver City, California; it launched in 2010 and is focused on machine vision, supercomputing and secure networking to transform healthcare. Its founder, Soon-Shiong, has previously built and sold two major pharmaceutical companies. He has developed a multitude of FDA-approved therapies that have reached patients globally. His research has focused on how to transform cancer care, Shine noted, using the immune system to help reduce the toxicities of standard chemo-radiation therapy.
"This partnership is about harnessing powerful science to serve humanity,” Soon-Shiong said in a statement. “Shine’s leadership in fusion technology and Lu-177 production aligns with my lifelong mission to make cancer treatment more precise, targeted and ultimately curative by activating the patient's immune system.”
Soon-Shiong noted that Lu-177 is currently approved as a radioligand targeting prostate cancer cells. He sees opportunity to further expand this “difficult to manufacture technology.” In connection with the $150 million investment, NantWorks and Shine have now entered a strategic partnership. This includes priority access to Lu-177 supply from Shine, positioning both organizations “to advance the next generation of targeted cancer treatment.”
Altogether, Shine has now raised over $1 billion in funding which it believes reflects “sustained investor confidence in its commercially driven path to fusion technology.”
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.