TechniScan Medical Systems Awarded $2.8 Million From National Institutes Of Health
Salt Lake City — Imagine having a breast cancer diagnostic exam that does not hurt. Imagine, too, that it provides unique diagnostic information that could help radiologists distinguish between cancers and benign conditions. That's the promise of a revolutionary ultrasound technology being developed by Utah company TechniScan Medical Systems. While the system is still in development stage and has not been approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, funding to support its continued development has been awarded by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
NCI/NIH recently awarded a $2.8 million Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) grant to TechniScan to support further development and preclinical testing of this technology. The grant, which will be disbursed in two phases, will fund research, development and testing of the technology. Competition for these National Cancer Institute SBIR grants is intense: fewer than 1 in 9 of the fiscal year 2006 new application submissions were funded.
Governor Jon M. Huntsman Jr. congratulated TechniScan on receiving the NIH grant. "The competition for NIH grants is significant and the fact that a Utah company in the Life Sciences economic cluster has received this funding is a clear acknowledgement of the quality of research and development which is occurring in the State."
The tasks for Phase I, the design of technical improvements to TechniScan's prototype UltraSound CT™ Imaging System, are underway and are expected to be complete by early 2007. In Phase II TechniScan will produce two copies of the improved UltraSound CT imaging system for preclinical testing at the University of California San Diego in La Jolla, California and at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. The clinical experience will be used to further improve the system. Dr. Steven Johnson, Chief Scientist for TechniScan, believes that this work supported by grant will produce a system with potential for FDA approval.
TechniScan is a private company that grew out of the University of Utah's Department of Bioengineering. Support for commercializing the technology has been provided by the Governor's Office of Economic Development (GOED) Centers for Excellence Program.
Centers of Excellence Director Nicole Toomey Davis said, "All 'Life Science' technology has a very long lead-time and this technology has been in development for years. It is exciting to see it come to fruition. For TechniScan to be where it is today with UltraSound CT(TM) is a big victory in medical imaging and the GOED Centers of Excellence Program is pleased to have been a part of its development."
"This process exemplifies the way the system should work," said David Robinson, TechniScan's CEO. "Without the support of institutions like the GOED, the University of Utah, and the NCI/NIH, promising technologies like ours would not be successfully commercialized. Their ongoing support is a tremendous validation of what we have accomplished and the continued financial support of our development and testing substantiates the real promise of our technology."
This new imaging system is intended to aid physicians in diagnosing breast cancer in conjunction with traditional mammography by providing detailed information about the anatomy and tissue properties of the breast in ways not previously possible. The goal of the USCT™ system is to characterize the ultrasound properties of normal, benign and malignant tissues in the breast; this characterization could enable physicians and radiologists to recognize more easily the presence of cancer.
The technology uses complex mathematical calculations, both inverse scattering transmission and advanced reflection algorithms, to produce 3-D images that represent the physical structures of the breast and how those structures relate to each other. This process provides information about characteristics of body tissue unavailable to physicians and radiologists in the past.
SOURCE: TechniScan Medical Systems