Positron Corporation (POSC)

[Kadin]

barbershop and OT's... Compare Exhibitors to the 10-K dated April 15, 2010... Note the COMPETITION.

It's possible the reason POSC is not disclosing potential Partnership(s) details; one or more may be a candidate, any announcement would cause a bidding war? JMO

http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/displayfilinginfo.aspx?FilingID=7188729-10521-45945&type=sect&dcn=0001140361-10-016655

Competition


The Company faces no direct competition as they are the only commercial manufacturer of a standalone PET system. The Company’s SPECT camera has competition from other SPECT imaging companies. The Company does not believe that MRI and CT scan imaging represent significant competing technologies, but rather complementary technologies to PET, since PET, MRI and CT scans each provide information not available from the others. Computed tomography angiography (“CTA”) is seen by some cardiologists to be competitive with PET myocardial perfusion imaging; however, there is an increasing public concern about a high radiation exposure of CT.


The Company is in a competitive imaging marketplace.Competition may come from other commercial manufacturers of PET/CT systems and SPECT/CT cameras such as General Electric Medical Systems (“GE”), Siemens Medical Systems, Inc. (“Siemens) and Philips Medical (“Philips”), all of which offer a full line of imaging cameras for each diagnostic imaging technology, including x-ray, MRI, CT, ultrasound and nuclear medicine, or SPECT/CT and PET/CT imaging. The molecular imaging systems sold by these competitors have been in use for a longer period of time than our products and are more widely recognized and used by physicians and hospitals.


In 2001-2002, GE, Siemens and Philips introduced PET/CT systems that combine CT scanning and PET in one unit. Since then production of standalone PET scanners have been discontinued and replaced by high price PET/CT systems with an average price tag of $2 million dollars. PET/CT integrates functional (PET) and structural (CT) information into a single scanning session, allowing excellent fusion of the PET and CT images and thus improving lesion localization and interpretation accuracy. The CT data scan is also used for attenuation correction, ultimately leading to high patient throughput. These combined advantages have rendered PET/CT a preferred imaging modality over standalone PET. As a result, all major PET manufacturers pursue the similar strategies of developing more and more sophisticated and expensive whole-body PET/CT scanners. A hospital or medical imaging clinic with a whole-body PET/CT device has flexibility of using the scanner for oncology, cardiology or neurology purposes. However, the redundancy of functions, as well as the high price and large size, has negative impact on usage of PET scanners by specialty physicians (cardiologists, neurologists, urologists, etc.).


Though PET/CT has been accepted commercially, the clinical benefits and the need for this technology in cardiology imaging remain controversial and are debated. Leading cardiologists believe that combined PET/CT is not important in imaging myocardial perfusion. The heart does not require that fine level of resolution to diagnose coronary disease due to the thickness of the heart. Significant limitations of cardiac PET/CT are also respiratory motion and metallic artefacts, which can result in art factual PET defects in up to 40% of patients, and these defects are moderate to severe in 23%. An interest in PET by cardiologists has increased significantly since 2009 boosted by preferable reimbursement rates and shortage of Tc-99m, a major cardiac SPECT radiopharmaceutical. Positron Corporation has been exploiting this raise of the demand by cardiologists and lack of the supply of affordable PET systems on the market by offering its cardiac specific, standalone Attrius™ PET.


The Radiopharmaceutical Delivery is dominated today by Cardinal Health (160 nuclear pharmacies and 26 cyclotron-based PET radiopharmaceutical manufacturing facilities), PETNET Solutions, a fully owned subsidiary of Siemens Medical Solutions USA (52 radiopharmacies and distribution centers), Triad Isotopes. (63 radiopharmacies after acquiring a Covidien’ network and 6 cyclotrons), and GE healthcare (31 radiopharmacies). There are also about 73 independent radiopharmacies and 70 institutional radiopharmacies (affiliated with major medical schools).


Radiopharmaceuticals for cardiac applications are prepared in radiopharmaceutical generators, Tc-99m generators for SPECT (manufactured by Covidien and Lantheus) and Rb-82 generators for PET (Bracco Diagnostics). Rb-82 has a half-life of only 75 seconds, and Rb-82 generators are delivered by Bracco directly to end users 13 times per year.


Tc-99m has a half-life of 6 hours, and centralized radiopharmacies use Tc-99m generators to deliver unit doses of Tc-99m based radiopharmaceuticals to customers. Centralized radiopharmacies incur very high fixed costs (around $1.0 million per year) and freight costs (two-three times-a-day deliveries to each client) and are affected by geographical factors: clients have to be in a 70-75 miles proximity to the pharmacy due to a short half-life of Tc-99m. The Positron Corporation’s Nuclear-Assist line of equipment does not have these limitations, as the radiopharmaceutical delivery devices can be placed directly into physicians’ offices with once-a-week deliveries.


Until lately, both cardiac radiopharmaceuticals have been protected by patents combined with exclusive distribution relationships. Since the end of 2008, Rb-82 (Cardiogen®) and Tc-99m Sestamibi (Cardiolite®) are available generically. This is a landmark event that opened the billion dollar nuclear cardiology radiopharmaceutical market.


Many of our competitors enjoy significant competitive advantages over us, including: greater name recognition; greater financial, technical and service resources; established relationships with healthcare professionals; established distribution networks; additional lines of products and the ability to offer rebates or bundle products to offer discounts or incentives; and greater resources for product development and sales and marketing. See “Item 1. Description of Business—Risk Associated with Business Activities—Substantial Competition and Effects of Technological Change”.