London, UK, 03 February 2016: BTG plc (LSE: BTG), a global specialist healthcare company, and Royal Philips (NYSE: PHG; AEX: PHIA), announced today a significant milestone in their collaboration with the treatment of the first liver cancer patient with LC Bead LUMI™ in conjunction with Philips Live Image Guidance, targeting a hypervascular tumor with the goal to block blood flow to achieve tumor necrosis.
Liver cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the world 1, and one of the most challenging to treat. Each year, more than 700,000 patients worldwide are diagnosed with liver cancer. 2 Interventional embolization is an option for some patients with tumors that cannot be removed by surgery.
The first patient treated signals the next stage in commercializing next generation embolic beads, which can be visualized during interventional procedures, allowing enhanced visualization to evaluate completeness of tumor treatment. As a result of the collaboration between BTG and Philips, for the first time doctors will be able to see rather than assume the location of the LC Bead LUMI™ , in order to deliver their treatment with more confidence when treating liver cancer.
“The aim with this new radiopaque embolic bead and visualization technology is to provide clinicians like me the ability to make real-time adjustments while conducting the embolization procedure, so that we can optimize patient’s treatment and hopefully improve targeting accuracy,” said Bradford Wood, M.D., Director of the NIH Center for Interventional Oncology* and Chief of Interventional Radiology. “It is reassuring for the clinician and the patient to know that the treatment was delivered exactly where it was aimed, and where it was needed. Treating the first patient using LC Bead LUMI™ in combination with dedicated Philips 2D X-ray and 3D CBCT image guidance is a milestone in our public-private partnership with both of our industry research partners. The imaging of the beads during this first procedure was exquisite and provided valuable information.”
By enabling visualization of beads during an embolization procedure, LC Bead LUMI™ will help embolization technology achieve its full potential. LC Bead LUMI™ has been developed with revolutionary radiopacity technology in collaboration with Philips that enables real-time visualization of bead location during embolization. LC Bead LUMI™, supported by Philips Live Image Guidance, has the potential to offer interventional radiologists more control, allowing enhanced visualization to evaluate the completeness of tumor treatment and end-point determination.
