FRI AM News: WisBusiness: the Podcast with Ashwin Karthikeyan, Phoenix-Aid; SHINE has ‘definite plan’ for doubling nuclear medicine production in Janesville

June 27, 2025

— This week’s episode of “WisBusiness: the Podcast” is with Ashwin Karthikeyan, founder of Phoenix-Aid.

Karthikeyan, who won this year’s Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan Contest, discusses his company’s advanced wound care dressing product. He describes it as a “better Band-Aid” for diabetic ulcers.

“These chronic wounds, they last a long time, they’re easily infected, they have a rather complex healing process,” he said. “Someone with a chronic wound generally has some sort of immune condition such as diabetes, or they’re in an older population set.”

The business is targeting underserved markets where patients only have access to standard gauzes, ointments and wraps, such as Native American reservations, rural areas or other countries such as India. The Phoenix-Aid alternative is meant to replace these treatments.

“It’s able to accelerate the healing of those wounds, protect those wounds from infections,” he said. “It lasts a longer time, it costs less and it’s something that the patient in most cases can change themselves, so it’s easier to use and sort of easier to teach.”

The company is currently conducting an animal study in Madison that’s testing the product in diabetic mice and rats to ensure it’s safe to use. Phoenix-Aid has also gotten approval to begin clinical trials in India, planned to start around November and run through spring or early summer.

“One of the biggest reasons we’re in India is it’s very cost effective and timely to get this clinical data, but we can use that data, the majority at least … to speed up the process of entrance into the American market, which we’re hoping to plan for around 2027 if we can manage it,” Karthikeyan said.

While the wound dressing was designed for diabetic ulcers, he noted it could eventually be applied for healing burns, bed sores and military trauma wounds.

The initial plan is to sell the product to pharmacies, clinics and hospitals, and ultimately go through distributors to reach these various health care providers. Karthikeyan said it could eventually be sold directly to patients as well.

“If you can apply a Band-Aid, generally you can apply this,” he said.

Listen to the podcast and see the full list of WisBusiness.com podcasts.

— SHINE Technologies has a “definite plan” for doubling production of its nuclear medicine product Ilumira in Janesville as it scales to meet customer demand.

That’s according to CEO and founder Greg Piefer, who recently discussed the company’s path forward about a year after first launching Ilumira for targeted cancer treatment. SHINE currently has capacity to produce 100,000 doses per year, and Piefer said that could be boosted to 200,000 doses per year over time.

“We’ve laid all the plans to be able to go, you know, to probably a couple hundred thousand doses per year within the facilities we have, and within the equipment we’ve already purchased,” he said in an interview this week, adding “we have massive ability to scale, even just out of Janesville.”

He noted the company’s production process typically seems to take just 10% the footprint to reach comparable yield as its competitors, and the Janesville site has plenty more room for expansion.

“Building another facility to double that again or triple that again is fairly straightforward and not particularly expensive,” he said.

Ilumira has now been shipped to 19 different countries across four continents, and Piefer says he expects that number to “continue to grow rapidly” as SHINE’s sales team works to reach new markets and get the treatment to more cancer patients. He noted the number of patients being treated with Ilumira within those 19 countries will keep rising as well.

SHINE recently submitted a marketing authorization application to the European Medicines Agency for Ilumira in the European Union. Piefer says it’s needed to get into the “mainstream” in Europe, similar to an FDA review in the United States.

The EU review process focuses on manufacturing techniques as well as marketing approaches, and Piefer says it’s well underway. He anticipates that will be completed later this year or early next year, which will “allow us to grow a lot more rapidly” in Europe.

Meanwhile, the company is also about 18 to 24 months away from finishing its Chrysalis production facility, Piefer noted, calling it a “long-awaited” project that will help to bolster U.S. supply chains for nuclear medicine.

“There continue to be shortages of medical radioisotopes, so it’s not just about superior economics down the road and cleaner technology and safer technology, but the current production infrastructure is regularly shorting patients the medicine they need,” he said.

He also weighed in on several nuclear power-related bills that cleared the state Assembly this week and went to Gov. Tony Evers’ desk to be signed into law. One would require the state Public Service Commission to conduct a nuclear power siting study in Wisconsin, while others included a resolution supporting nuclear power and fusion energy and a proposal to establish a board to oversee a nuclear power summit in the state.

While Piefer called the bills passing “a good first step” in the right direction, he argued economic incentives are needed for nuclear energy, similar to those available for other renewable energy resources. He noted nuclear fission can be considered renewable, as the spent fuel could be recycled multiple times and reused for power generation.

“If you look at other renewables like wind and solar, there’s typically a couple cent per kilowatt-hour premium that are paid for those sources,” he said. “If nuclear were to even get half of that for being renewable, I think the economic incentives change in such a way that you would actually be able to deploy nuclear at scale.”

— Medical College of Wisconsin faculty were involved in creating a more nuanced framework for categorizing traumatic brain injury, which was detailed in a recently published study.

Through an initiative of the National Institutes of Health-National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the college’s faculty members helped develop the new framework that goes beyond the traditional “mild, moderate or severe” categories.

By incorporating various elements such as clinical factors, biomarkers, imaging and “modifiers” such as pre-existing health conditions, the new framework aims to capture the complexity of traumatic brain injury.

“While current categories for TBI can still be helpful in early clinical treatment, they were established in 1974, and don’t take into account the many advances our field has achieved over the last 50 years such as precise neuroimaging and biomarkers in your blood that can confirm TBI,” MCW’s Dr. Lindsay Nelson said in a release on the study.

The older framework, called the Glasgow Coma Scale, doesn’t reflect differences in how patients recover from a brain injury, according to MCW. The announcement notes some patients with mild injury can have persistent symptoms, and others classified as severe can have a quicker recovery.

Other MCW faculty tapped for the NIH’s TBI Classification and Nomenclature Initiative include Drs. Michael McCrea and Timothy Meier of the college’s Department of Neurosurgery and Dr. Danny Thomas, an emergency medicine doctor in the MCW Department of Pediatrics.

McCrea, who co-directs the college’s Center for Neurotrauma Research, was on the NIH initiative’s steering committee and was a co-senior author for the study that was published in the latest issue of The Lancet Neurology.

See more in the release.

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— A new report commissioned by WMC shows 5% of all employment in the state was supported by manufacturing exports last year, underlining the key role of international trade to Wisconsin’s economy.

The report was produced by Economic Leadership LLC on behalf of Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce and the Midwest Manufacturing Association. While the report itself was focused on the Midwest more broadly, WMC has provided state-level figures from the report as well.

They show the state’s manufacturing sector exported $24 billion in products last year, with nearly 150,000 jobs in the state tied to exports. Of that total, 60,440 were directly supported by manufacturing exports and another 88,620 were indirectly supported.

Top categories for exports include agriculture and construction machinery with $1.76 billion, computer equipment with $1.74 billion and navigational and control instruments with $1.63 billion.

Canada was the state’s top export destination for manufacturing with $7.94 billion in 2024, followed by Mexico with $4.36 billion and China with $1.55 billion.

“Wisconsin’s economy depends on manufacturing, and a growing number of manufacturers depend on exports,” WMC President and CEO Kurt Bauer said in a statement on the findings.

Meanwhile, the report also notes the state has a “modest trade deficit” as imports have outpaced exports since around 2016. Last year, 29% of the state’s demand for manufactured goods was addressed through international imports, per the report.

“We depend on internationally sourced raw materials and goods to then create components and products that we contribute elsewhere. It’s imperative we support this cycle through good policymaking, ensuring foreign and domestic markets are free, fair, and reciprocal,” Bauer said.

As with exports, Canada, Mexico and China are the state’s top sources for imports, the report shows. But the majority came from China last year with $6.42 billion in imports, followed by Canada with $6.25 billion and Mexico with $5.94 billion.

See the release and report.

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