Top 10 Radio Pharmaceutical Companies

Why the Radiopharmaceuticals Market Is Accelerating at 9.12% CAGR

The Global Radiopharmaceuticals Market was valued at USD 7.09 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow from USD 7.737 billion in 2025 to USD 18.52 billion by 2035, registering a CAGR of 9.12% during the forecast period (MRFR Report ID: MRFR/HC/1119-CR, Authors: Nidhi Mandole and Rahul Gotadki, last updated May 6, 2026). This growth rate sits meaningfully above the broader healthcare diagnostics and pharmaceutical sector average, driven by two reinforcing structural forces.

First, epidemiological pressure: the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer projects global cancer incidence will reach approximately 29.5 million cases by 2040 — a 47% increase from 2020 levels — creating sustained demand for both diagnostic imaging (PET, SPECT) and targeted radiotherapeutic treatment across oncology, neurology, and cardiology applications.

The Radiopharmaceuticals Market is dominated by North America, which has the largest regional share, driven by advanced healthcare infrastructure, a dense network of cyclotron and PET imaging facilities, favorable CMS reimbursement policy for innovative diagnostic radiopharmaceuticals (including a 2025 rule improving payment for agents like PYLARIFY), and the concentration of leading radiopharmaceutical manufacturers and clinical trial activity. Europe stands as the second-largest market, buoyed by robust nuclear medicine infrastructure in Germany, France, and the UK, together with a well-established regulatory route via the European Medicines Agency.

Asia-Pacific is the fastest-growing region, with China's radiopharmaceuticals market alone projected to grow from USD 0.53 billion in 2024 to USD 1.28 billion by 2035 at an 8.18% CAGR, driven by government-backed nuclear medicine infrastructure investment and rising cancer incidence (approximately 4.57 million new cancer cases reported in China in 2020, growing at an estimated 2.5% annually).

What Structurally Separates Radiopharmaceutical Market Leaders from the Field

MRFR identifies four structural axes defining category leadership in the Radiopharmaceuticals Market: (1) Isotope production and supply chain control — companies that own or have secured dedicated access to cyclotron networks, nuclear reactors, or isotope generator manufacturing (Curium's end-to-end development-manufacturing-logistics platform, Lantheus's PYLARIFY production network) can guarantee the time-sensitive, short-half-life supply chain that radiopharmaceuticals require, a capability new entrants cannot replicate without years of regulatory and infrastructure investment; (2) Clinical validation at blockbuster scale — Novartis's Pluvicto and Lutathera have proven that radioligand therapies can achieve traditional pharmaceutical commercial scale, fundamentally changing how Big Pharma and biotech investors value radiopharmaceutical pipeline assets, evidenced by the wave of multi-billion-dollar M&A in 2024–2025.

Top 10 Global Radiopharmaceutical Companies — MRFR Rankings (2026)

Rankings reflect MRFR's qualitative assessment of scale, clinical pipeline strength, and strategic position in the radiopharmaceuticals sector. Revenue figures are drawn from official SEC filings and earnings releases where the company is publicly traded; private company figures and segment-embedded revenue (Bayer's Xofigo, Bracco) are clearly marked.

Company Profiles

1. Novartis AG | NYSE/SIX: NVS | Basel, Switzerland

Novartis has converted radioligand therapy from an experimental oncology modality into a validated blockbuster pharmaceutical category — a transformation evidenced by Pluvicto's Q4 2024 sales of USD 351 million (up 29% year-over-year) and Lutathera's USD 190 million (also up 29%), combining for over USD 540 million in a single quarter from just two products. The March 2025 FDA approval expanding Pluvicto into the pre-chemotherapy metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer setting tripled its eligible patient population, and by Q3 2025 quarterly sales had reached USD 564 million, a 45% year-over-year increase, with management targeting more than USD 5 billion in peak annual sales.

Novartis's January 2024 FDA approval for commercial Pluvicto production at its purpose-built Indianapolis radioligand manufacturing facility resolved the supply constraints that had previously forced the company to pause new patient starts — a manufacturing scale-up achievement that few competitors can replicate given the specialized infrastructure radioligand production requires. The USD 1 billion acquisition of Mariana Oncology (May 2024) extends Novartis's radioligand pipeline into earlier-stage assets.

2. Curium | Private (CapVest Partners) | Paris, France / Boston, USA

Curium's November 2025 recapitalization — valuing the company at approximately USD 7 billion via a new Continuation Vehicle backed by ICG, TPG GP Solutions, CVC Secondary Partners, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, and other institutional investors — was described by the parties as the largest transaction in nuclear medicine globally, formally establishing Curium as the most valuable independent (non-pharma-owned) radiopharmaceutical company in the world.

Curium's structural differentiation is end-to-end vertical integration: the company controls development, manufacturing, and logistics across its global platform rather than depending on third-party isotope suppliers or contract manufacturers, a capability that becomes increasingly valuable as radioisotope supply chains face growing demand pressure from the broader market's 9.12% CAGR.

3. Lantheus Holdings, Inc. | Nasdaq: LNTH | Bedford, Massachusetts, USA

Lantheus has built the leading commercial PSMA PET imaging franchise in the United States through PYLARIFY, generating revenue that supported FY2025 guidance of USD 1.475–1.51 billion and Q3 2025 quarterly revenue of USD 384.0 million — making Lantheus the largest pure-play diagnostic radiopharmaceutical company by US market presence.

The company has pursued an aggressive acquisitive strategy to build a broader diagnostic radiopharmaceutical portfolio: closing the Evergreen Theragnostics acquisition in Q2 2025 and the Life Molecular Imaging acquisition in July 2025, the latter adding Neuraceq, a globally approved beta-amyloid PET imaging agent for Alzheimer's disease — extending Lantheus beyond oncology into neurology diagnostics. In 2026, Lantheus became the target of a takeover approach from Curium valuing the company at approximately USD 7 billion, reflecting the scarcity value of Lantheus's PSMA imaging franchise amid the broader theranostics consolidation wave.

4. Cardinal Health, Inc. | NYSE: CAH | Dublin, Ohio, USA

Cardinal Health’s Nuclear and Precision Health Solutions segment has been a consistent growth story, posting double-digit annual growth. It grew from USD 1,197 million in FY2023 to USD 1,369 million in FY2024 and USD 1,578 million in FY2025, a 32% three-year growth trajectory that demonstrates sustained demand for radiopharmaceutical services, unswayed by the volatility affecting Cardinal’s much larger pharmaceutical distribution segment.

Cardinal Health’s competitive advantage is based on the scale of its physical infrastructure: it operates one of the largest nuclear pharmacy networks in North America, making, preparing and delivering time-sensitive doses of radiopharmaceuticals to hospitals and physician offices on schedules dictated by the decay rates of the isotopes – a logistics capability that would take years for new market entrants to replicate.

5. GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. | Nasdaq: GEHC | Chicago, Illinois, USA

GE HealthCare occupies a unique dual position in the radiopharmaceuticals market — manufacturing both the diagnostic radiopharmaceutical agents (DaTscan, AdreView, Myoview, Ceretec, Indium 111-based agents) and the PET/SPECT imaging hardware that administers them, creating an integrated diagnostic ecosystem that pure-play radiopharmaceutical manufacturers cannot offer. The company's Pharmaceutical Diagnostics segment generated USD 625 million in Q3 2024 revenue, contributing to overall company revenue of USD 4.9 billion for the quarter, with healthy procedure volume growth offsetting softness in the China market.

6. Bristol-Myers Squibb (RayzeBio Platform) | NYSE: BMY | Princeton, New Jersey, USA

Bristol-Myers Squibb's USD 4.1 billion acquisition of RayzeBio, which closed in February 2024, represents one of the largest single capital commitments any major pharmaceutical company has made to enter the radiopharmaceuticals category, specifically targeting the actinium-225 alpha-emitter therapeutic class — a next-generation radioisotope category that delivers higher-energy, shorter-range radiation than the beta-emitters (like Novartis's Lutetium-177) that currently dominate commercial radioligand therapy.

7. AstraZeneca plc (Fusion Pharmaceuticals Platform) | LSE/Nasdaq: AZN | Cambridge, UK

AstraZeneca's USD 2.4 billion acquisition of Fusion Pharmaceuticals, completed in March 2024 — just one month after BMS's RayzeBio deal — confirms that targeted alpha therapy (TAT) had become the consensus strategic battleground among major oncology-focused pharmaceutical companies entering the radiopharmaceuticals market in 2024. The acquisition gave AstraZeneca access to FPI-2265, a prostate cancer radioconjugate in clinical development, along with Fusion's dedicated radioconjugate manufacturing assets based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada — providing AstraZeneca with both pipeline assets and the specialized production infrastructure that radioconjugate manufacturing requires.

8. Bayer AG | XETRA: BAYN | Leverkusen, Germany

Bayer's approach to the radiopharmaceuticals market differs structurally from its Big Pharma peers: rather than pursuing large-scale acquisitions like BMS and AstraZeneca, Bayer has built its position around its established Xofigo (radium-223 dichloride) franchise for bone metastases — contract-manufactured through Cardinal Health's Nuclear and Precision Health Solutions infrastructure — while expanding its pipeline primarily through strategic partnerships rather than M&A. Bayer's September 2025 launch of a new radiopharmaceutical for targeted oncology therapy reflects continued organic and partnership-driven expansion of its radiopharmaceutical portfolio, expanding therapeutic options aligned with the broader industry shift toward personalized medicine.

9. Bracco Imaging S.p.A. | Private | Milan, Italy

Bracco Imaging brings century-plus heritage in medical imaging to the radiopharmaceuticals market as one of the world's largest contrast media and diagnostic imaging companies, with its radiopharmaceutical diagnostic products complementing its core MRI and CT contrast agent business to provide hospitals and imaging centers with a comprehensive diagnostic imaging product portfolio across modalities. As a privately held family-owned Italian multinational, Bracco maintains independence from the public market pressures and acquisition dynamics reshaping its publicly traded competitors, allowing it to pursue long-term R&D investment in nuclear medicine imaging solutions without quarterly earnings pressure.

10. NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, LLC | Private | Beloit, Wisconsin, USA

NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes occupies a uniquely strategic position in the US radiopharmaceuticals supply chain: the company operates the only FDA-approved non-uranium-based domestic technology for molybdenum-99/technetium-99m production (the RadioGenix System), directly addressing a long-standing US national security and healthcare supply chain vulnerability — historical dependence on foreign, uranium-based reactor production of Mo-99 that has caused periodic nuclear medicine supply shortages affecting hospitals nationwide.

M&A Activity Tracker

Key Trend: MRFR identifies three concurrent M&A themes reshaping the radiopharmaceuticals competitive landscape through 2024–2026. First, Big Pharma's alpha-emitter land grab — BMS's RayzeBio (USD 4.1B) and AstraZeneca's Fusion Pharmaceuticals (USD 2.4B) acquisitions, both closing within weeks of each other in early 2024, confirm that major pharmaceutical companies view targeted alpha therapy as the next major radiopharmaceutical commercial opportunity following Novartis's beta-emitter success with Pluvicto and Lutathera.

R&D & Innovation Signals

• Novartis's January 2024 FDA approval for commercial Pluvicto production at its purpose-built Indianapolis radioligand manufacturing facility resolved prior supply constraints and enabled the company to fully resume new patient starts — a manufacturing scale-up milestone that demonstrates the capital and regulatory complexity required to produce radioligand therapies at commercial scale, with Novartis expanding from approximately 300 to a targeted 500 treatment sites in 2024.

• The clinical and commercial shift toward targeted alpha therapy (TAT), evidenced by BMS's USD 4.1B RayzeBio acquisition and AstraZeneca's USD 2.4B Fusion Pharmaceuticals acquisition (both closing within weeks in early 2024), represents the most significant R&D direction shift in the radiopharmaceuticals market: alpha emitters such as actinium-225 deliver higher-energy, shorter-range radiation than beta-emitters like Lutetium-177, offering potentially superior tumor-killing potency with reduced collateral damage to healthy tissue.

• GE HealthCare's 2024 launch of a Theranostics Center of Excellence in Europe, in partnership with University Medicine Essen, reflects institutional investment in the combined diagnosis-and-therapy clinical workflow that is becoming standard practice in advanced nuclear medicine departments, training clinicians and developing protocols for PSMA, neuroendocrine, and emerging theranostic indications.

• NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes' FDA-approved RadioGenix System represents a structural domestic supply chain innovation — producing molybdenum-99/technetium-99m via non-uranium-based technology that eliminates US dependence on foreign, highly-enriched-uranium reactor production, directly addressing the periodic nuclear medicine supply shortages that have historically disrupted US hospital diagnostic imaging capacity.

• Novartis's March 2025 FDA approval expanding Pluvicto into the pre-chemotherapy metastatic castration-resistant prostate cancer setting — tripling the eligible patient population — demonstrates how regulatory label expansion functions as a primary growth lever in the radiopharmaceuticals market, with Pluvicto's pre-chemo indication accounting for 60% of new patient starts by Q3 2025 according to Novartis management commentary.