Lantheus Holdings has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Evergreen Theragnostics, in an all-cash transaction consisting of an upfront payment of USD 250 million and up to an additional USD 752.5 million in potential milestone payments.

Evergreen is a clinical-stage radiopharmaceutical company engaged in Contract Development and Manufacturing (CDMO) services as well as drug discovery and commercialization of proprietary products.

This transaction is expected to solidify Lantheus’ capabilities as a fully integrated radiopharmaceutical company. The addition of Evergreen’s scalable manufacturing capabilities and infrastructure enhances Lantheus’ ability to meet the complex demands of radiopharmaceutical development and production.

The acquisition also expands Lantheus’ oncology diagnostic pipeline by adding both OCTEVY, a registrational-stage PET diagnostic agent for certain neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) that could complement Lantheus’ therapeutic candidate PNT2003, as well as a number of clinical and pre-clinical novel theranostic pairs.

“As Lantheus continues to advance its industry leadership, this transaction, along with the agreement to acquire Life Molecular Imaging, enhances our operations across the radiopharmaceutical value chain,” said Brian Markison, CEO of Lantheus.

“With Evergreen’s manufacturing and development capabilities, we become fully integrated and will ultimately make a difference in the lives of more patients. We are pleased to welcome Evergreen’s talented team to Lantheus and are confident that their expertise in radiopharmaceutical theranostics and culture focused on developing new solutions for cancer patients will enrich our organization,” Markison added.

“Today marks an exciting new chapter for Evergreen as we look to join the Lantheus team. Lantheus’ industry expertise and financial strength will help us bring our innovations to a broad patient population faster and support our mission to improve options for cancer patients through theranostic radiopharmaceuticals. We look forward to benefiting from Lantheus’ experience and resources to further advance our pipeline and continue developing cutting-edge therapies and diagnostics that have the potential to transform patient care. I am very pleased to have our Evergreen team join another industry-leading company with a shared vision,” said James Cook, CEO of Evergreen.