GE HealthCare to Acquire Japanese Radiopharmaceutical Business

Likely to be effective next year, GE HealthCare will assume full control of Nihon Medi-Physics (NMP), a Japanese diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals and molecular imaging agents producer. Earlier GE HealthCare was a 50:50 joint venture partner of Sumitomo Chemical, operating a company in Tokyo, Japan. The full control is planned to take place by the end of March 2025 through the purchase of the remaining 50% of the shares.

GE HealthCare Pharmaceutical Diagnostics Division head Kevin O’Neill explained that Japan is considered a strategic market because the global molecular imaging market is worth $7B. “Currently, Japan is the world’s third largest market for pharma products and ranks first in Asia for cyclotron installation- positioning the country to be the leader in molecular imaging and the Asian region,” O’Neill said. He stressed that the company’s specialized experience and facilities would strengthen GE HealthCare’s precision care plan in Asia and extend its operations further into Japan where its contrast media and medical devices are currently popular.

NMP was established in 1973 and holds 13 manufacturing plants and GE HealthCare’s major product radiotracers such as Vizamyl, DaTSCAN, and Myoview for neurological, cardiovascular, and thermosoncologic diagnosis. For the year ended 2023, NMP realized its total revenues at 28.2B Japanese yen, which is equivalent to nearly 183M US dollars.

Hiroshi Ueda, Executive Vice President of Sumitomo Chemical, said he was proud of the partnership with GE HealthCare and stated that they have been able to provide molecular imaging to patients in Japan for fifty years. Ueda further responded noting that GE HealthCare is well placed to support the expansion of NMP over the years of next changes in the highly competitive industry.

GE HealthCare initially invested 50% in NMP in October 2004 when it bought out a U.K. radiopharma company known as Amersham. The deal is expected to generate 30B yen (around $200M) of operating profit for Sumitomo Chemical. As GE HealthCare takes control, it is expected that NMP will play a pivotal role in improving molecular imaging innovation in Japan and further.

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