A West Coast life sciences firm known for whipping up medical isotopes has whipped up a sizeable asking price for its sale.
Australia’s Telix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. announced Thursday (April 11) the close of an US$82-million acquisition deal for Burnaby-based ARTMS Inc.
ARTMS (pronounced like Artemis, the Greek goddess of the hunt) specializes in technology that produces the technetium-99m medical isotope.
The private company was spun off in 2010 from Triumf, the national particle accelerator centre based at the University Endowment Lands adjacent to the City of Vancouver.
Its goal is to address a global shortage of medical isotopes, which are used in diagnosing cancer and cardiac conditions.
“Our aim has always been to ensure key isotopes are available on demand to the populations that need them most, and joining forces with Telix is the ideal way to realize this ambition,” ARTMS chief executive Doug Gentilcore said in a March statement when the deal was initially announced.
The global supply of medical isotopes previously relied on production from a nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., which produced a large quantity of a parent isotope that decayed over time to form the medical isotope.
