Jeremy L. Dillon
RW Monitor
6/6/2014
Perma-Fix Medical Corporation, a recently created subsidiary of Perma-Fix Environmental Services, is “rapidly” gaining more medical industry partners to help bolster its Technetium-99m (Tc-99m) technology, Perma-Fix CEO Lou Centofanti said in a presentation given at an energy conference held in Warsaw, Poland, this week. Perma-Fix formed the subsidiary in an effort to attract better financing to move the technology through the U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulatory approval process. Centofanti indicated that the company already has some letters of intent from medical industry companies to participate either through financing or technical expertise, although he did not offer any specifics. “Our desire is to go to the FDA and the EU [European Union] after we bring on more medical partners that actually work in the medical field,” Centofanti said during his presentation. “That is now rapidly occurring. We have several medical partners we are working with today that are signing up to join us. We both will be adding technical expertise as well as adding money to the company. With that in place, we will then apply for FDA approval.” Centofanti also added that he expects the company to file with the FDA by the end of this year.
Centofanti has previously said that the process is attracting a lot of interest in the European market, and according to a Reuters report, the subsidiary has entered into a financial deal to conduct a reverse takeover of a Polish firm, seemingly to establish a base in Poland. With Canada set to stop government spending in 2016 on the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor in Canada, one of the world’s largest suppliers of Tc-99m, the medical isotope industry is expecting a shortage in the market, leaving room for Perma-Fix’s technology. The company announced earlier this year that it had successfully received validation for its medical isotope production process using standard reactors in both the United States and Poland with a process that uses low-enriched uranium while reducing waste by-products.
