NorthStar Secures $185M to Scale Actinium-225 Supply

An actinium-225 therapy begins losing usable material before it ever reaches a patient. The isotope's roughly 10-day half-life turns production, quality release, drug manufacturing, and shipping into one continuous operating clock.

NorthStar Medical Technologies has secured a multi-year growth-capital facility of up to $185M from Hercules Capital to shorten that clock at commercial scale. The company said $100M is being provided upfront to expand isotope production and clinical and commercial radiopharmaceutical manufacturing at its integrated campus in Beloit, Wisconsin.

The financing follows NorthStar's January 2026 announcement that it had begun commercial-scale production of no-carrier-added actinium-225, or n.c.a. Ac-225, using electron-accelerator technology. NorthStar also announced in April that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration accepted its Type II Drug Master File for the isotope, giving drug developers a regulatory file they can reference in their own submissions. The acceptance is an infrastructure milestone, not an FDA approval of an Ac-225 therapy.

What NorthStar Announced

NorthStar announced the facility on September 29, 2026. Hercules Capital committed up to $185M over multiple years, with $100M funded upfront. The public announcement did not disclose the facility's interest rate, maturity, future draw conditions, valuation, or ownership implications.

That distinction matters. “Up to $185M” describes the maximum size of the facility, while $100M is the amount NorthStar identified as available at the outset. The capital will accelerate investment in isotope production and cGMP manufacturing capabilities for pharmaceutical and biotechnology partners developing precision cancer therapies.

NorthStar reports supply and manufacturing agreements with more than 30 pharmaceutical and biotechnology customers. The company does not identify those customers in the financing announcement, and the figure should be read as a company-reported measure of commercial relationships rather than audited revenue or proof of future demand.

Why Actinium-225 Creates an Operating Problem

Ac-225 is an alpha-emitting radioisotope used in the development of targeted therapies that carry radiation to cancer cells. The U.S. Department of Energy has described expanded Ac-225 production as an important pipeline for clinical research because limited supply has constrained the field.

Supply is only one part of the problem. Ac-225 decays as the material moves through purification, testing, release, drug manufacturing, packaging, and delivery. NorthStar CEO Frank Scholz described radioisotopes to Fierce Pharma as being like a melting ice cube: every additional step and delay reduces the material that remains available.

That makes elapsed time part of the commercial product. A developer needs a reliable isotope source, but it also needs quality systems, manufacturing capacity, regulatory documentation, and logistics aligned closely enough that the material can become a usable radiopharmaceutical batch. A larger production number loses meaning if the handoffs around it remain slow or fragile.

The Case for One Campus

NorthStar's strategy is to place isotope production and radiopharmaceutical manufacturing on the same 55-acre campus. Its Ac-225 production process uses an electron accelerator and radium-226 targets to create radium-225, which is purified and allowed to decay into no-carrier-added Ac-225. NorthStar says its dedicated Ac-225 facility is about 30,000 square feet and was designed for commercial-scale production.

The company's 52,000-square-foot CDMO facility supports research, preclinical work, Phase I through Phase III clinical manufacturing, analytical testing, cGMP production, packaging, and radioactive-material logistics. NorthStar can also work with isotopes it does not produce itself, including lutetium-177 and copper-64, while the company currently produces Ac-225 and copper-67.

Co-location does not eliminate scientific, regulatory, or manufacturing risk. It reduces the number of physical and organizational handoffs between isotope supply and drug production. In a supply chain built around radioactive material, fewer handoffs can mean less transport time, tighter scheduling, and a clearer line of responsibility when a batch needs to move from isotope production into manufacturing.

The Regulatory and Manufacturing Milestones

NorthStar's Type II Drug Master File gives pharmaceutical partners a way to reference information about the isotope's manufacturing and quality controls in investigational or marketing applications. It can reduce duplicated documentation across programs, but it does not replace the clinical and regulatory work required for any therapy.

The company says it plans to transition to a higher-capacity n.c.a. Ac-225 production line later in 2026. Fierce Pharma reported that NorthStar operates three buildings at the Beloit site and plans to add manufacturing suites for early-stage, late-stage, and commercial demand.

Frank Scholz leads that expansion after joining NorthStar as President and CEO in 2023. James T. Harvey, Ph.D., a company co-founder and current SVP and Chief Science Officer, provides technical continuity from NorthStar's earlier medical-isotope work. CTO Jeff Schaaf oversees operations, quality, strategic projects, CDMO development, IT, and new-facility construction, according to the company's leadership page.

What the Financing Has to Prove

The facility arrives after NorthStar established a production milestone, a regulatory reference file, and an integrated-campus thesis. The next work is industrial: bring higher-capacity isotope production online, add clinical and commercial manufacturing suites, maintain cGMP quality, and coordinate customer programs without letting capacity outrun reliable execution.

Hercules Capital is financing the conversion of technical progress into a larger supply-and-manufacturing system. The public evidence does not establish exact future output, customer economics, or the success of any therapy that may use NorthStar's isotope. It does show where NorthStar believes value is created: at the point where scarce material, regulatory readiness, and manufacturing capacity stop behaving like separate businesses.

For a radiopharmaceutical developer, the product is not simply a vial of Ac-225. It is the usable time that remains after every production and manufacturing handoff has done its job. NorthStar now has $100M upfront, and access to a larger facility, to make more of that time survive the trip through Beloit.