| By Neil Johnson, reporter, anchor, Big Radio |
SHINE Technologies announces it has landed $70 million in private investments as the Janesville isotope maker seeks a path toward profitability.
The company announces its brightening financial picture this week. It comes on the heels of news NorthStar Medical Technologies, another medical nuclear isotope maker planned to eliminate 93 jobs and pivot away from production of the bone-illuminating Molybdenum-99.
NorthStar and SHINE have shifted from plans to produce moly-99. Instead, they’re moving more heavily into what they say is a currently more profitable market segment: cancer therapy isotopes. NorthStar says moly-99’s, although planned as a major isotope NorthStar would produce, has not been a profitable. That, a company CFO said, is because
It’s not clear whether SHINE’s $70-million dollar windfall changes its new trajectory, although SHINE says on its web site the investment allows it to sink more resources into development of cancer therapies.
SHINE’s major manufacturing facility, the 45,000-square-foot Casseopia, was initially built with the idea it would supply about 30 percent of the global market demand for moly-99. SHINE CEO Greg Piefer told Big Radio in August that short funding forced SHINE to lay off 55 employees, many in SHINE’s moly-99 division. He said then that SHINE now has a longer path to fully commercializing moly-99 production in Janesville.
Big Radio Asked SHINE officials whether NorthStar’s Exit from Moly-99 would spur SHINE to pivot back toward producing the bone-illuminating isotope.
A company official said SHINE has no comment on moly-99 or NorthStar’s recent pivot to cancer drugs.
