For those unfamiliar with the term, radiopharmaceuticals are designed to be the opposite of a natural disaster for the body. While traditional radiation therapy and chemotherapy to treat cancer hit both cancer cells and healthy cells, “like a hammer to the body,” radiopharmaceuticals consist of a targeting molecule that specifically seeks out cancer cells, linked to a radioactive payload that delivers radiation to the targeted cells. “It’s a 100% transformative therapy, the wave of the future – it’s hot, revolutionary”, said Arvin Abraham, partner at Goodwin, to Mergermarket. The drug class has now had proven a commercial success, and treatments are getting better and more targeted but there is “extremely limited” production capacity for the isotopes often used in radiopharmaceuticals, especially actinium-225 and lutetium-177. Indeed, many of the M&A deals announced in the last 18 months were done in order to secure manufacturing and supply chain, as well as new therapy candidates, Abraham said.