When asked what her greatest asset is, Mary Anne Heino will tell you it’s the nearly 800 employees who make up leading radiopharmaceutical-focused company, Lantheus, which is headquartered in Bedford, Massachusetts. 

With more than 65 years delivering life-changing science, Lantheus has been committed to improving patient outcomes in challenging therapeutic areas. Heino’s decade of leadership at Lantheus has been marked with high-profile successes, which she credits to her exemplary team. 

Heino has spearheaded  numerous successes, leading with an inclusive approach. Lantheus’ acquisition of Progenics in June of 2020 was the result of a 5-year growth strategy to diversify and expand the company’s radiopharmaceutical footprint. The acquisition provided Lantheus access to what is now PYLARIFY (piflufolastat F18), their first-in-class diagnostic for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging in prostate cancer patients which has impacted more than 200,000 patients since its FDA approval in 2021. On the heels of this success, Lantheus acquired the rights to two promising radiotherapeutics from POINT Biopharma, expanding the company’s presence in prostate cancer and neuroendocrine cancers.

The Progenics acquisition was the largest in Lantheus’ history and required an unprecedented level of teamwork, strategy, and coordination, stemming from Heino’s conviction that fostering an environment built on trust and common purpose yields business growth and positive patient outcomes.

Meeting Employee Needs, Supporting Emerging Leaders

Lantheus embraces challenges as opportunities to reinforce the Company’s core values, especially its tenet to “Let people be their best.” 

Lantheus has long been a champion for equality and inclusion and, under Heino’s visionary leadership, has achieved near parity in representation, particularly among women. Sheis guided by the belief that diversity of experience and perspective can have a positive impact on business practices and the company’s ability to effectively reach employees, investors, and most importantly, patients.

For  Heino, women in leadership is a goal she has worked hard to make tangible. More than 50 percent of Lantheus employees holding titles of Vice President and above are women, as are one-third of its board of directors. By comparison, women made up 56.8 percent of the U.S. workforce in 2022 and only accounted for 32 percent of senior management roles. In early 2023, only 10 percent of Fortune 500 companies were helmed by women.

Heino believes that everyone has the capacity to lead, and women should feel empowered to take on the mantle of leadership despite some deeply ingrained seeds of self-doubt that many cultivate in response to societal norms that disfavor women’s natural leadership styles. 

She offers, “As women, we hold ourselves to impossibly high standards of what our contribution has to be to make us worthy. I encourage women to embrace their goals and bring others along to support these goals. Assess your strengths and find the place where your contributions will be lauded.”

Championing Growth

Ms. Heino takes her responsibility to employees, patients, customers, and investors to heart . Her winning formula to overcome business challenges includes an honest assessment of needs and an active approach to fulfilling them. She embraces inevitable business challenges as opportunities to fine-tune strategies and right-size teams, while purposefully seeking diverse experts who share her passion for patients and building better solutions for a variety of disease states. With its pioneering spirit, Lantheus has now entered into neurodegenerative disease, having acquired Cerveau Technologies and its breakout asset, MK-6240, an F 18-labeled PET imaging agent that targets Tau tangles in Alzheimer’s disease. Heino envisions a strong future for Lantheus, built by collaborative teams sharing her enthusiasm for diversity and inclusion. This multiplicity of expertise and the drive to do right by patients is what continues to support unfettered growth at Lantheus.