Cardinal Health expands ability to make molecular imaging agents

Cardinal Health Inc. (NYSE: CAH) will manage and operate the Knoxville, Tennessee, cyclotron facility of ProVision Healthcare through an agreement that expands the Dublin, Ohio, drug distributor’s ability to make molecular imaging agents nationwide.

Ohio’s largest corporation has been partnering with academia and industry to push the boundaries of nuclear medicine — and have first dibs on commercializing the industry’s innovations — by using its know-how and technologies to enable researchers to come up with new products.

Cardinal operates 32 cyclotrons (make that 33) nationwide and is investing in more. The cyclotrons produce radioactive tracing agents used in patient imaging studies. The nuclear agents must be used within hours of being produced.

Cardinal distributes its radiopharmaceuticals through 155 nuclear pharmacies nationwide. “Our agreement will play a key role in enabling us to bring this important modality to patients in Tennessee and throughout the southeast United States,” said John Rademacher, the company’s president of Nuclear and Specialty Pharmacy Services, in a release.

Cyclotrons produce imaging agents used in positron emission tomography (PET) studies, among other studies. PET imaging is one of the fastest-growing areas of nuclear medicine, partly because it is being developed for new applications, such as diagnosing Alzheimer’s disease.

U.S. sales of radiopharmaceuticals used in PET imaging, and its cousin, single photon emission computed tomography, was $1.2 billion in 2009 and expected to reach $4.8 billion by 2017, according to the latest Market for SPECT and PET Radiopharmaceuticals report by Bio-Tech Systems Inc.

In PET imaging, specialized radiopharmaceuticals called biomarkers detect and trace abnormal cell functions that are associated with diseases like cancer. Using PET scanners, doctors can non-invasively diagnose diseases in their earliest stages, as well as track the effectiveness of treatment.