Varian Medical Systems Acquires Assets of IKOEmed and IKOEtech; Acquisition to Add Software for Accelerating Radiotherapy Treatment Planning

PALO ALTO, Calif., June 25 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Varian Medical Systems, Inc., (NYSE: VAR) today announced it has acquired the assets of Houston-based IKOEmed and IKOEtech, privately-owned suppliers of software used in the planning of radiotherapy and radiosurgery treatments. The acquisition enables Varian to offer hospitals and clinics an additional software tool to automate and accelerate the most time-consuming portion of the treatment planning process. Varian is paying approximately $2.2 million plus an additional amount based on achievement of specified milestones to acquire the IKOE assets.

The software is designed to achieve greater than 50 percent reduction in the contouring portion of the radiotherapy treatment planning process, which typically takes anywhere from 30 minutes to 4 hours. It automates the contouring process by matching patient images with pre-contoured images from an expert database created by renowned radiation oncologists. This eliminates the need for clinicians to manually outline between 10 and 20 organs in each of anywhere from 100 to 200 images of a patient's disease site.

source: Varian

Children With Leukemia May Not Need Radiation

Wired PR News – Radiation therapy may not be needed for some children with leukemia. As reported by HealthDay News, a new study suggests that chemotherapy administered alone may lead to longer periods of remission and fewer negative side effects for some children with the disease.

Dr. Ching-Hon Pui, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital oncology chairman and author of the study, is quoted in the report as stating of the findings, “Effective chemotherapy can cure up to 90 percent of all children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia without the use of cranial irradiation… Survivors of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia can now enjoy excellent quality of life, virtually similar to that of the general population.”

More about the study may be found in the June 25th New England Journal of Medicine issue.

source: Wired PR News

Elekta Provides VMAT and Radiosurgery Solutions for New Jersey Health System

CentraState Medical Center (Freehold, New Jersey) has purchased two new state-of-the-art Elekta radiation therapy treatment systems, both with Volumetric Modulated Arc Therapy (VMAT). The first site in the world to have both Elekta Axesse and Elekta Infinity, CentraState will offer the most advanced cancer care available to its patients.

CentraState Medical Center, a part of the CentraState Healthcare System, currently is treating 45 to 50 patients a day – with fluctuations as high as 70 patients per day, all on one treatment unit. When the time came to add another treatment system, CentraState elected to replace another manufacturer’s system and install two new Elekta systems.

Jan Dragotta, Clinical Director, Radiation Oncology, says the decision process took several months and involved a team of CentraState physicians, physicists and administrators.

“In order to determine which technologies, both standard and emerging, had the most value, we completed a complex analysis to determine our current market and potential for growth,” she said. “We all felt radiosurgery and motion management were the areas we wanted to grow, and that was supported by The Advisory Board Company in Washington D.C., which projected that, in the next 10 years, the biggest growth in cancer treatment will occur in radiosurgery.”

source: Elekta

University of Kentucky Brings TomoTherapy Treatment Technology to Brain & Body Radiosurgery Program

MADISON, Wis – June 2, 2009 – TomoTherapy Incorporated (NASDAQ: TOMO) announced today that the University of Kentucky (UK) Chandler Medical Center’s Markey Cancer Center has commenced treating patients with the TomoTherapy® Hi·Art® treatment system, a versatile, CT scanner-based device, which integrates image guidance for increased treatment accuracy and helical radiation therapy delivery for enhanced tumor targeting. The Hi·Art treatment system was selected after a thorough review of technologies and will be extensively utilized in the Markey Cancer Center’s stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) efforts, as part of its new Brain and Body Radiosurgery Program.

Marcus E. Randall, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Radiation Medicine at the UK College of Medicine, serves as director of the Brain and Body Radiosurgery Program. According to Dr. Randall, TomoTherapy technology was a natural choice.

“We were looking for a platform that would permit exceptionally accurate treatments while allowing for reasonable throughput of patients,” said Dr. Randall. “We considered all our options, including RapidArc™ and Cyberknife®, but we felt that the dose distributions from TomoTherapy were consistently superior to other platforms. The ability to do imaging at the time of treatment was also a unique advantage, so the decision actually became pretty simple.”

source: TomoTherapy

Radiation Therapy Staffing Rates Remain Stable

Staffing rates for radiation therapy facilities have remained relatively stable within the past two years, according to the 2009 ASRT Radiation Therapy Staffing Survey.

The survey focused on medical facilities that employ full-time radiation therapists. Facilities with a 2009 budget for radiation therapists reported having 4.97 full-time therapists on staff, down only slightly when compared to the 2007 survey, which reported 5.20 full-time therapists.

"It is very interesting to see that despite the downturn in the economy, the number of open full-time employee positions for therapists and dosimetrists has remained relatively steady over the past two years," said Myke Kudlas, ASRT's vice president of education and research. "This may represent regional differences in demand, a trend we have seen in many imaging specialties."

The survey also showed the vacancy rate for radiation therapists has slightly increased to 7.6 percent from 5.4 percent in 2007.

source: ASRT

Short-course radiotherapy effective for painful vertebral bone metastases

Philadelphia, Penn. – A single high dose of radiotherapy is as effective in relieving the pain from vertebral bone metastases as 10 smaller treatments, according to new research from the Radiation Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG) that will be presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology Annual Meeting in Orlando on May 31, 2009. RTOG, an NCI-funded national clinical trials group, is a clinical research component of the American College of Radiology.

RTOG researchers previously reported that breast and prostate cancer patients with painful bone metastases who received a single radiotherapy treatment of 8 Gy had the same pain relief and narcotic use three months after treatment as patients who received 10 radiotherapy treatments each consisting of 2 Gy for a total of 30 Gy. They also found that patients who received the 8 Gy regimen reported fewer side effects, although those patients did have to be retreated more often than patients who received the higher dose.

source: University of Michigan Health System

Novel Targeted Radiation Therapy From Immunomedics Produces Objective Responses in Pancreatic Cancer

ORLANDO, Fla., May 31, 2009 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Immunomedics, Inc. (Nasdaq:IMMU), a biopharmaceutical company focused on developing monoclonal antibodies to treat cancer and other serious diseases, today reported a 30% objective response rate in 10 evaluable patients with inoperable, advanced pancreatic cancer treated with a novel targeted radiation therapy developed by the Company in combination with gemcitabine. Interim results from the ongoing Phase Ib dose-escalation study were presented at the 2009 Annual Meeting of American Society of Clinical Oncology.

"Targeted radiation therapy is well suited for solid cancers, such as pancreatic cancer, and our data, though limited, corroborate this notion," remarked Cynthia L. Sullivan, President and CEO. "In light of the fact that there aren't many viable treatment options for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, we believe clivatuzumab tetraxetan labeled with yttrium-90 is in a good position to become the first radioimmunotherapeutic agent for pancreatic cancer therapy, and we currently intend to develop it through commercialization on our own," continued Ms. Sullivan.

source: GlobeNewswire