Medical cyclotrons are growing. You cannot buy Best Cyclotron. IBA is the proxy.

Best Cyclotron Systems announced on September 10 that it completed factory acceptance testing in July for a 70-MeV high-current proton cyclotron being delivered to Taiwan's National Atomic Research Institute. The press release reads like the kind of milestone that moves a stock.

Except there is no stock to move.

Best Cyclotron Systems is a private company under TeamBest Global, a holding company founded by Dr. Krishnan Suthanthiran. It has no ticker, no quarterly filings, and no publicly available revenue figures. For U.S. retail investors, the headline signals activity in a growing market — but not a tradeable one. The question this raises is not whether Best Cyclotron is building something real. It is whether the accelerating demand for medical cyclotron infrastructure creates an investable opportunity, and if so, where.

The market the headline points to

The 70-MeV cyclotron being delivered to Taiwan is not a hospital imaging device. It is an accelerator capable of producing short-half-life radioactive isotopes for medical and industrial use, from neutron generation to targeted radiopharmaceutical production. Taiwan's National Atomic Research Institute is developing a 70 MeV proton cyclotron, with construction planned through 2027. The stated goal is to reduce reliance on imported isotopes and stabilize local supply for nuclear medicine.

The broader medical cyclotron market is small but growing. Industry estimates place it at approximately $330 million in 2026, projected to reach $405 million by 2030, depending on the forecast model. The growth driver is straightforward: nuclear medicine imaging — particularly PET scans using isotopes like fluorine-18 and gallium-68 — is expanding globally. Countries and institutions are building domestic cyclotron capacity because isotopes decay quickly, making long supply chains fragile.

This is a supply infrastructure story. The bottleneck in medical isotope production is not demand for diagnostics — it is the limited number of facilities that can produce them. Cyclotrons are the machines that create these isotopes, and each installation represents a multi-year, multi-million-dollar capital commitment.

Who actually trades

Best Cyclotron Systems describes itself as currently manufacturing 10+ cyclotrons globally, with plans to exceed ten per year beginning next year. It operates from facilities in Ottawa and Vancouver, Canada, and Knoxville, Tennessee. The company won its first international high-current cyclotron tender in 2010 for a facility in Italy and has since delivered systems across multiple energy ranges, from 6 MeV research units up to 70 MeV multi-particle systems.

None of that is visible on any exchange. TeamBest Global also includes Best Theratronics, a manufacturer of radiation therapy equipment that has faced labor disputes and management controversy in recent years. The group remains privately held.

The closest publicly traded company operating in the cyclotron and medical isotope space is Ion Beam Applications S.A. — known as IBA — listed on Euronext under the ticker IBAB.BR. IBA is the dominant player. It holds approximately 60% market share in medical cyclotron systems, operates its PanTera division for radiopharmaceutical production, and reported record net sales of €620 million for fiscal year 2025, a 24% year-over-year increase. Its backlog reached a new all-time high of €1.6 billion.

IBA is a larger play than cyclotrons alone. The company's revenue comes primarily from proton therapy equipment (IBA Clinical) and industrial and radio-pharma solutions (IBA Technologies). The cyclotron and isotope production business sits inside IBA Technologies, which reported €142 million in equipment order intake for 2025, a slight decline from the prior year. But IBA Technologies has been growing at 30% and the company completed an acquisition of ORA, a radiochemistry leader, to expand its position in nuclear medicine.

For context on how these two companies compare in the medical isotope infrastructure space:

	Best Cyclotron Systems	IBA (Ion Beam Applications)
Status	Private	Public (Euronext: IBAB.BR)
Market cap	N/A	~€500 million
Cyclotron range	6–70 MeV	Multiple energy platforms
Estimated market share	Small	~60%
FY2025 revenue	Not disclosed	€620 million (all divisions)
Isotope production	Cyclotron sales	Cyclotron sales + PanTera isotope production
Backlog	Not disclosed	€1.6 billion

The table makes clear why the Best Cyclotron headline, while technically interesting, is not directly relevant to a retail investor's portfolio. You cannot invest in Best Cyclotron. And the publicly listed company in this space — IBA — is already pricing in the same structural demand that Best Cyclotron is chasing.

Why the market structure matters

There is a split in this industry that most observers miss. Medical cyclotron demand is bifurcating into two segments with very different economics.

One segment is the low-energy PET cyclotron market, used by hospitals and imaging centers to produce isotopes like fluorine-18 for same-day diagnostics. These are smaller, lower-energy machines, and the competition is broader — GE HealthCare, Siemens Healthineers, and Sumitomo Heavy Industries all participate. This is a volume business with established players and moderate margins.

The other segment is high-energy cyclotron production for therapeutic isotopes and research. Machines like the 70-MeV system being delivered to Taiwan fall here. They produce isotopes used in targeted cancer therapies — such as actinium-225 and lutetium-177 — which command much higher prices per curie than diagnostic isotopes. The market is smaller, the capital requirements are higher, and the number of qualified competitors is narrower. Best Cyclotron and IBA's PanTera division both compete in this segment.

This split matters because the value capture is moving toward the higher end. The push toward radiopharmaceutical therapy — particularly alpha-emitter isotopes for targeted alpha therapy — is the fastest-growing part of the isotope market. It is also the part that requires the most specialized equipment and the deepest technical moat.

What to actually watch

The headline about Best Cyclotron is a signal that the high-energy cyclotron market is growing, and that non-IBA players are active. But the investable implication is indirect.

If you want exposure to the medical cyclotron and isotope production infrastructure buildout, IBA is the publicly traded vehicle. It carries the balance sheet, the backlog, and the production infrastructure. The company reported adjusted EBIT of €27.4 million on €620 million in revenue for FY2025, with guidance of at least €32 million for FY2026. Its market capitalization of approximately €500 million suggests the market is assigning a modest multiple to a company with a dominant position in a growing niche.

The risk for IBA is that its growth is concentrated in proton therapy (IBA Clinical saw +44% net sales growth), which is capital-intensive and has faced margin pressure from legacy projects. The cyclotron and radiopharma segment (IBA Technologies) grew more modestly. If the market for therapeutic isotopes accelerates as expected, IBA Technologies should capture most of that growth given its scale and production capability. But the timing is uncertain — PanTera's commercial-scale actinium-225 production facility only began construction in 2025.

The key issue is not whether medical cyclotron demand will grow. It will. The more important question for an investor is whether IBA can convert its dominant market position into proportional earnings growth, or whether the capital intensity of proton therapy delivery and the slow ramp of isotope production keep margins compressed. The company's gross margin decreased to 32.2% in 2025, and its net debt position was €58 million. Those numbers are manageable, but they are not the profile of a company with pricing power in a supply-constrained market — yet.

Best Cyclotron's Taiwan delivery is a data point that the high-energy segment is real and expanding. It is not a trade.