HAYWARD, Calif., Oct. 18, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- RefleXion Medical, a biotargeting oncology company using each cancer’s unique biology as a means to destroy it, will showcase its novel approach toward cancer radiotherapy at the upcoming American Society for Radiation Oncology (ASTRO) annual meeting in San Antonio, Oct. 21-24. The ASTRO meeting is widely considered the largest and most influential gathering of radiation oncologists in the world.

"RefleXion’s presence at the ASTRO meeting is the culmination of a 10-year journey that began with a simple question: if a cancer cell emits a signal, can we shoot right back to destroy it?” said RefleXion’s Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Sam Mazin, Ph.D. “Using biology to guide radiotherapy, we hope to have the means to turn cancer on itself."

RefleXion’s biology-guided radiotherapy (BgRT)* is the first to utilize the cancer itself to guide radiation delivery, even in tumors that are moving. The machine uses positron emission tomography (PET), the gold standard in cancer staging and imaging, in a novel way. PET makes use of a small amount of a radioactive drug, called a tracer, to highlight the differences between healthy cells and cancer cells. The most commonly used tracer is FDG, a glucose-based compound, that BgRT uses to determine where the tumor is located. Cancer cells rapidly consume the FDG, which breaks down and instantly produces emissions, thereby signaling their location. Real-time response to these detected emissions is the fundamental principle of BgRT.
“The RefleXion technology could allow us to extend the benefits of radiation to a greater number of patients by being able to efficiently treat several sites at the same time with a high level of confidence,” said Dwight E. Heron, M.D., director of Radiation Oncology Services at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) Hillman Cancer Center and professor of radiation oncology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Given that the growing body of clinical evidence suggesting that radiotherapy for polymetastatic tumors, or more than three tumors, could be curative, the introduction of BgRT, a radiotherapy approach that may significantly decrease toxicity, is very exciting.”

RefleXion’s BgRT technology is the highlight of several scientific presentations at ASTRO including the following:

Oral Presentation
Wednesday, Oct 24, 4:25PM-4:35PM

PSMA-Directed Biologically-Guided Radiation Therapy of Castration-Sensitive Oligometastatic Prostate Cancer Patients (Room 303)

Rad Oncology Homepage