Melbourne, Australia-based Telix announced its new Kyoto operation this week, also revealing it has hired two executives - Shintaro Nishimura and Takeshi Oka - as president and chief medical officer, respectively.
CEO Christian Behrenbruch told in-Pharmatechnologist there is significant demand for Telix’s products in Japan, partly due to the country’s changing demographic profile.
“As a market, Japan is probably the second largest homogeneous market after the US for our products.
“There is a lot of government and academic momentum around radiopharmaceuticals in Japan, both diagnostic and therapeutic, given the aging nature of the population,” he added.
Behrenbruch described Telix’s candidates as “targeted radiation products” explaining they can “both image and treat patients either by changing the dose or swapping the isotope on the same targeting agent.”
Radiopharmaceutical manufacturing
In December, Telix formed a manufacturing partnership with JFE Engineering Corporation, a Yokohama-based engineering services firm that operates in the areas of energy and environment, urban infrastructure and industrial machinery.
The agreement will initially focus on the feasibility assessment for producing TLX-250 (girentuximab), an antibody-based agent for diagnosis of clear cell renal cell carcinoma, for the Japanese market.
According to Behrenbruch, “They (JFE) have built a state-of-the-art isotope production facility in Yokohama and we will be working with them closely to make our products available.”