Radiopharmaceutical opens Hamilton facility to mass produce targeted cancer therapies

A McMaster chemistry professor and founder of a Hamilton, Ont. biopharmaceutical company jokes the idea for a new manufacturing facility “started on a bar napkin.”

John Valliant, the CEO of Fusion Pharmaceuticals Inc. says that brainstorming on a serviette mapped out a plan to enlist teams and produce the intellectual property ultimately forming the company that’s developing unique cancer medicines.

“Radiopharmaceuticals, which is what we work on, are changing the lives of cancer patients,” Valliant explained.

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“It’s a combination of radiation therapy, innovative cancer biology and drug discovery.”

The targeted treatments at the 27,000-square-foot Longwood Road location, in the back of the McMaster Automotive Research Centre, will have the capacity to produce 100-thousand doses of radiopharmaceuticals every year and ship them to patients around the world.

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Valliant told Global News the class of drugs enlists targeted alpha therapies (TATs) using “little radiation bombs” to zero in on certain tumor types to kill cancer cells.

“The problem is they have a short shelf life,” Valliant said. “It’s called a half-life, so you have to make ‘just in time’ manufacturing so that it can get to the patients on time.”

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Fusion currently ships across Canada as well as to the U.S. and Australia.

The company and McMaster University have entered into a 15-year lease agreement and it’s expected Fusion will tap into the learning institution’s five-decade experience with medical isotopes.

“We’re proud to expand on our partnership with Fusion – and to grow our region’s biotechnology and biomanufacturing sector,” McMaster president David Farrar said in a statement.

Mayor Andrea Horwath characterized the venture as an example of Hamilton’s “future” for manufacturing which hopes to embrace the life sciences sector.

“Cutting-edge research that’s being translated from the lab to actual products that help people. What else could you ask for?” Horwath said.

A company spokesperson says the facility is expected to be fully operational by 2024 after “formal approvals” from Health Canada related to manufacturing are issued.