Amid supply chain challenges, demand for medical imaging contrasts such as barium sulfate and iodine which are used by radiologists to diagnose patients is rising.
To address these supply concerns, Voyageur Pharmaceuticals aims to become the first vertically-integrated, carbon-neutral North American supplier of these contrast agents, taking minerals from its own sources “From the Earth to the Bottle.”
The Alberta, Canada-based company is moving forward with producing a line of generic and new innovative barium and iodine radiology imaging contrast media products. It is also developing a new carbon fullerene drug for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
Voyageur was founded in 2017 by brothers Brent and Brad Willis who have been developing barium sulfate projects for the last 30 years.
With Brent’s experience on the business development side of project management and Brad’s know-how in the field and operations, the brothers took on the roles of Voyageur’s CEO and COO respectively.
“Once we understood the value of the mineral (barium sulfate) for the oral radiology imaging market, we decided to create a vertically integrated pharmaceutical company,” Brent told Proactive.
Voyageur’s team includes contrast media experts and leading doctors from the radiology pharmaceutical industry, which Brent said gives the company the expertise to extract minerals and create drugs and pharmaceutical products, with its focus on creating a first-of-its-kind Endohedral Metallofullerenes (EMF) MRI molecules.
“By combining these talents, our company can vertically integrate by extracting the main ingredients for our pharma product lines, which allows our company to have the lowest cost of ingredients compared to all our competitors,” he said.
Barium sulfate and iodine in medical imaging
Radiology, also known as diagnostic imaging, is a tool used by health professionals to save lives through the early detection of disease. A key component of this tool is medical imaging contrast, a dye-like substance used by radiologists to see a patient’s organs and tissues more clearly in medical images.
“Scans without contrast show all our tissues and organs as one,” Brent explained. “When contrast is introduced to the body, the organs can be distinguished from the tissues helping identify anomalies such as tumors.”
Barium sulfate is used orally typically for diagnostic studies of the gastrointestinal tract, which includes the esophagus, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, and rectum. It is currently made from expensive synthetic barium sulfate, which has a very narrow particle distribution curve, Brent noted.
“Our natural pharmaceutical grade barium sulfate is very low cost and has a wider particle distribution curve, which actually improves the quality of the scans,” he said.
Brent added that barium sulfate was a critical strategic mineral and that more than 80% of what is used in North America is currently imported. “High-purity barite (barium sulfate) is extremely rare, and there is no longer any supply of natural pharmaceutical-grade barite available in the world,” he said.
Iodine is the most used contrast on the market used in computed tomography (CT) scans. It is used intravenously, injected into veins or arteries, within the disks or the fluid spaces of the spine, and into other body cavities.
“There are critical shortages of iodine contrast with supply issues out of China and the European Union,” Brent noted, pointing out that these shortages lead to price volatility.
Need for a North American supplier
Brent highlighted that there are currently no vertically integrated companies in the medical imaging contrast space, but Voyageur plans to change this to ensure North America has a reliable supply chain of high-quality, green pharmaceuticals.
“This has become the most important factor in our plan due to the destabilization of the global markets with lockdowns, war, and the West’s move to decouple from China,” Brent said. “Finding the main ingredients for these products has become very challenging to the current market.”
He added that Voyageur’s approach brings down the cost of ingredients significantly. “By being vertically integrated, we will ensure we have the most competitive products in the market,” Brent said.
As chronic diseases become more prevalent, in turn increasing the need for earlier detection, the imaging contrast market is set to double from about $5 billion a year today to about $10 billion a year in the next 10 years, according to GE Healthcare.
“With current shortages and rising prices, we see strong market growth and profitability,” Brent said.
Voyageur’s mineral resources
Voyageur owns barium and iodine resources in North America which are core to its long-term vision of fully integrating both the barium and iodine contrast media markets.
Among its three 100% owned barium sulfate projects is the Frances Creek project in British Columbia, Canada which has more than 60 years of supply of pharmaceutical-grade barium for the imaging market.
Brent told Proactive that when founding Voyageur, this project caught his attention because he had never seen a naturally occurring barite that is as pure as what is found at the Frances Creek site. “It is very pure barium sulfate which allows our company to generate highly profitable revenue streams by selling it as contrast media,” Brent said.
On the iodine front, the company has an iodine brine project in Utah. It is also evaluating iodine resources in several different areas in the United States, having analyzed iodine-rich brine waters in five states.
“Our iodine project will move forward with a low-cost approach of focusing on disposal wells of oil field brine waters,” Brent said. “The Utah project is a high-grade lithium project with iodine, which will be moved forward after our iodine project has advanced.”
Green drug pipeline
Also setting Voyageur apart is its use of carbon capture to create the only green drug pipeline in the industry, with the end goal of becoming 100% self-sufficient across its manufacturing activities.
“The carbon that is captured is currently being developed to make new innovative MRI drugs and potentially a new line of CT drugs,” Brent said.
The company is developing new barium drugs for the CT market and a new EMF drug line for MRI and CT using its carbon capture process in order to bring down the cost of EMF.
Brent noted the current high cost of EMF at $35.4/mg. “We may be the first company to break the economic barrier to begin creating new fullerene drugs for the radiology market,” he said.
The company has a three-part strategy, with the first step hinging on using imported ingredients and a contract manufacturer to make the initial generic barium and iodine products and generate cash flow. Then Stage 2 involves commencing manufacturing of its own products at its own facility, importing its ingredients. Finally, Stage 3 involves completing its vertical integration by producing its own barium and iodine, reducing costs and becoming very competitive in the market.
“We are currently in Stage 1 of our plan and we are working on advancing to Stage 2 in 2023 and Stage 3 in 2024,” Brent said.
In February 2023, the company was preparing to launch its first product SmoothX barium sulfate CT contrast media oral suspension for the CT imaging market in Canada, a significant milestone for Voyageur.
A comparative study, released in April, of SmoothX barium contrast media versus ReadiCat 2% with a taste test and CT scans on patients showed that SmoothX was favored on drinkability and taste by 75% of patients, compared to 25% favoring the competing product.
The CT scans were performed by Canada Diagnostics in Calgary and SmoothX performed as well as the current drug.
At present, Voyageur has five Health Canada barium contrast media products licensed and it is making progress with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to get these products approved for the US market. The company is also creating a drug dossier for the European and other international markets, initially focused on countries with favorable regulatory environments.
“Once cash flow is established, we have another six generic barium products, several new barium products and multiple iodine drugs we are going to have licensed by Health Canada and the FDA,” Brent concluded.
Contact the author at emily.jarvie@proactiveinvestors.com
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