As the field grows rapidly, companies are luring people from other nuclear industries and tapping the expanding educational talent pipeline, but are constrained by a steep learning curve and the value of real-world experience.
Escalating investment in radiopharmaceuticals is creating competition for talent. As companies including AstraZeneca, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly and Novartis have moved into the modality, the need for staff with specific skills that span biopharma and nuclear science has grown. The situation is spurring steps to strengthen the talent pool ahead of the anticipated launches of potentially blockbuster drugs.
Demand for employees is outpacing supply because radiopharma is evolving faster than it can develop talent, said NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes CEO Frank Scholz. The clinical and commercial success of Novartis’ lutetium-177-based cancer therapies Lutathera and Pluvicto has fueled a surge in research. Almost 60% of all studies of lutetium-177 on ClinicalTrials.gov were registered after Pluvicto won FDA approval in 2022. More than one-third of all studies of actinium-225, another radioisotope, were registered in 2025.
The pace of efforts to scale up workforces is constrained by the need for specific skills that are not found elsewhere in biopharma.
“You cannot just transfer somebody over who has worked in, say, small molecule operations and put them into running a radioactive hot cell train,” Scholz told BioSpace, referring to containment chambers that are shielded against nuclear radiation. “That’s a misconception. The learning curve is very steep.”
Novartis has named radioligand therapy as an area where it faces a challenge in attracting and retaining top talent. AstraZeneca discussed Fusion Pharmaceuticals’ highly skilled workforce and its knowledge base, including radioisotope supply and manufacturing expertise, in its evaluation of the value of the biotech after it bought Fusion for up to $2.4 billion in 2024.
Nucleus RadioPharma CEO Steve Hahn told BioSpace that the industry needs more radiation biologists to help design drugs rationally. The biologists work on teams to understand how to choose the best isotope for an application, how to produce the nuclear species and how to attach the radionuclide to a targeting molecule so the harm to healthy tissues is minimized.
“Expertise in putting that together—radiochemistry, process chemistry, etc.—is going to be important in the development of these drugs. There are certainly gaps there,” Hahn said. “There’s a limited amount of experts available in radiochemistry, linker technology, process chemistry, etc.”
Deepening the Talent Pool
Work to address talent gaps is ongoing. Multiple universities are training people to work in the industry, offering qualifications such as a masters in radiopharmaceutical manufacturing or a Ph.D. in radiochemistry. Naming radiochemistry, nuclear engineering and health physics as key areas, Scholz said the education programs need to scale up and tailor training to radiopharmaceuticals to serve the industry’s rising need for talent.
Other sources of employees are partly filling the supply gap in the meantime. Scholz has seen an influx of people who previously worked in the Navy, energy production and other areas of the broader nuclear industry transition into pharma. The radiopharmaceutical sector is attractive because it offers nuclear experts a chance to improve cancer treatment, Scholz said.
But Scholz added that the need for real-world experience of radiopharmaceuticals means it will take time for the industry to fully balance supply and demand. People joining the radiopharmaceutical workforce with experience of other nuclear industries still find that there are aspects of the sector that are new to them.
“There are radiochemists, there are nuclear engineers, there are health physicists—all of these people could create a bottleneck if they don’t know how to deal with regulatory,” Scholz said. “We are double regulated, not only by the FDA GMP but also by [the Nuclear Regulatory Commission].”
Connections to academia can help companies access and retain talent. Hahn said Nucleus’ ties to the Mayo Clinic, which helped set up the radiopharmaceutical company, are “really important because that’s where people train and know about these different processes and approaches.”
NorthStar has a partnership with University of Wisconsin–Madison that is designed to support workforce development in the nuclear medicine sector, among other objectives. Through the partnership, students have gained access to training and workforce development opportunities at the company.
The partnership is part of NorthStar’s broader staff recruitment and retention program. Scholz said the company “invested in talent with a lot of lead time” through recruitment and training, and over-hired to plan for staff turnover. The actions have given NorthStar a talent pool that means the company is no longer exposed to the strained supply-demand situation, Scholz said.
As the sector grows, the number of people needed to compete could rise. The billions of dollars spent on radiopharmaceutical R&D programs could yield major drugs, creating more jobs across the supply chain. By the end of the decade, Scholz envisages an industry that needs to operate at scale to support multiple blockbuster products.
“Then we need a different level of talent. That’s coming from schools and internal training at NorthStar and other places,” Scholz said. “It’s about execution. It’s not about figuring out what types of talent we need.”
