Supply Woes Hit Isotopes Sector
1/13/2010
January 13, 2010 | The Wall Street Journal - Overlapping reactor outages will soon rattle the supply chain for medical-scanning isotopes, causing fresh headaches for patients, doctors and companies that have dealt with repeated shortages in recent years.
This time, companies including Cardinal Health Inc. and Covidien PLC say advanced warning about a key coming plant outage helped them prepare. But the isotopes' very short lifespan means no one can stockpile supplies, and more than half the world's production capacity will be shuttered for about a month starting in mid-February.
Covidien told customers in a recent letter that it is using a "multifaceted" approach, but that "periods of significant shortages will still occur."
One of the top producers of material used to make isotopes, a reactor in Canada, has been sidelined since last May to fix a heavy-water leak, and the latest estimate is for a return by late March.
That is delayed from earlier estimates, which means the outage will overlap with a planned maintenance shutdown at the other major producer, in the Netherlands, which is slated to begin Feb. 19 and last six months.
The reactors produce material called molybdenum-99 that decays into technetium-99m, which is the world's most commonly used medical isotope.It is frequently used in scans to check for heart problems and cancer; there are an estimated 20 million nuclear medicine procedures in the U.S. each year.
The Canadian and Dutch plants are crucial global suppliers and particularly important for the U.S., where they are used to make nearly all isotopes. But both aging facilities have had issues and outages in recent years that have forced the industry to scramble for alternatives.
The supply chain is complex. In North America, MDS Inc.'s Nordion unit performs additional processing of material from the Canadian facility and then two companies—Covidien and privately held Lantheus Medical Imaging—make generators that produce the medical isotope.
These are distributed to hospitals and through radiopharmacies, where Cardinal has the biggest business.
Covidien, which gets most resources from the Dutch plant, is managing the looming shortfall by readying supplies of thallium, which is an older isotope used in heart scans; tapping molybdenum from other European reactors; and working with customers on efficiently using the isotopes they have.
The company announced plans last month to sell its radiopharmacy business to Triad Isotopes, Inc. for undisclosed terms in a deal expected to close in the second quarter.
By JON KAMP
Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page B4B
