Curium to Acquire Lantheus for Up to $8 Billion in Record Nuclear Medicine Deal

On 3 August 2026, nuclear medicine company Curium Pharma and Lantheus Holdings signed a merger agreement. Curium will acquire all outstanding shares of Lantheus for $102.50 per share in cash, representing a base consideration of $7 billion. If sales milestones are achieved before 2030, shareholders may receive additional contingent value rights of up to $12 per share, capping the total transaction value at $8 billion, approximately RMB 54 billion, setting a new record for merger and acquisition value in the nuclear medicine sector. The Lantheus board approved the transaction unanimously. Post-merger operations will cover oncology, neuroscience, and cardiology patients in more than 70 countries.

Lantheus, founded in 1956, counts Pylarify as its core asset, a PET imaging agent targeting prostate-specific membrane antigen. Since receiving FDA approval in May 2021, it has become the leading product in the US PSMA PET imaging agent market. As of September 2025, more than 500,000 scans had been performed with the product. In the first quarter of 2026, Lantheus generated global revenue of $377.3 million. Curium, controlled by private equity firm CapVest Partners, employs more than 3,800 people globally and operates over 80 manufacturing sites, ensuring stable supply of key therapeutic radionuclides such as lutetium-177 and actinium-225. Curium's phase III lead asset, 177Lu-PSMA-I&T injection, was submitted to China's CDE for a clinical trial application in January 2026 and received clinical implied approval within the first quarter of 2026.

The acquisition uses a composite payment structure of fixed cash plus milestone-based CVR. The one-time cash closing provides Lantheus shareholders with a certain short-term return, while the CVR tied to 2030 sales targets allows Curium to avoid paying a high premium upfront for uncertain future sales. Nuclear medicine M&A cases in the past three years include: Bristol Myers Squibb's acquisition of RayzeBio for $4.1 billion in 2023, AstraZeneca's acquisition of Fusion Pharmaceuticals for $2.4 billion in 2024, Eli Lilly's acquisition of Point Biopharma for $1.4 billion, and Regeneron's announcement in 2026 of a 50/50 cost and profit sharing collaboration with Telix Pharmaceuticals.

The merger of Curium and Lantheus is the first full-chain integration that simultaneously brings isotope manufacturing, diagnostic entry points, therapeutic pipelines, and global distribution channels into a single system. Post-merger, Lantheus products such as Pylarify can directly access Curium's in-house production capacity, Curium's distribution networks in Europe and Asia-Pacific can support the overseas expansion of Lantheus imaging agents, and Lantheus's direct sales team and reimbursement access system in the US market will become a key channel for Curium's therapeutic pipeline to enter American hospitals. The integration of the two R&D, sales, and compliance systems will take at least two years, and the high acquisition debt will also pressure subsequent R&D investment.

In China's nuclear medicine industry, in 2024, carbon-14 targets were successfully extracted from the heavy water reactor at Qinshan Nuclear Power, marking the first time China used a commercial nuclear reactor to mass-produce carbon-14 isotopes. In March 2026, the China Spallation Neutron Source achieved curie-level mass production of medical-grade alpha isotopes for the first time. In April 2026, China's first self-developed Class 1 innovative nuclear drug, technetium [99mTc] pexireotide peptide injection, was officially approved, becoming the world's first broad-spectrum tumor imaging agent for SPECT imaging. In the same month, the China Spallation Neutron Source again achieved curie-level mass production of medical-grade alpha isotopes. Since 2026, NRT Medical completed a RMB 1 billion Series E financing, and Full-Life Technologies completed financing of over RMB 1 billion.