High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound for Prostate Cancer Highlighted at American Urological Association Annual Meeting

Charlotte, NC (PRWEB) June 04, 2015 The recent 110th Annual Meeting of the American Urological Association in New Orleans, LA, featured a wealth of events and exhibits focusing on less invasive, more targeted treatment of urological cancers. SonaCare Medical, a world-wide leader in the design and manufacture of high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU) devices, delivered a meeting program that highlighted innovations in image-guided focal ablation including a multi-modal HIFU console Sonasource and associated probes Sonablate and Sonatherm. In addition, the Company announced a new partnership with Invivo Corp. for the incorporation of Invivo’s image fusion capability into its Sonablate prostate device. The AUA meeting program featured several HIFU and partial gland treatment events including a workshop on Partial Gland Ablation for Prostate Cancer co-hosted by the AUA, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Society of Urologic Oncology (SUO). This workshop consisted of a series of presentations and panel discussions on topics including technology, indications, patient selection, and biopsy and imaging techniques. The final panel of the workshop discussed “How to Assess This Technology for Clinical Adoption and Regulatory Approval.” Dr. Peter Scardino, Chairman of Surgery and Urology at Memorial Sloan Kettering described the workshop. “Today we heard excellent pros and cons from experts in the field advocating for and against focal therapy. I think we can safely say there are reasons to be cautious and there are reasons to be cautiously optimistic. I think we’re going to see more and more interest in focal therapy. It’s a way of treating cancers that otherwise might be left alone in active surveillance that has less morbidity than radical surgery or radiation therapy. And we now have imaging techniques like MRI that can really see the cancer much better than we ever have in the past and identify patients who are really candidates for focal ablations.” In addition, SonaCare Medical hosted a User Group Meeting for International HIFU physicians at which Prof. Mark Emberton, Professor of Interventional Oncology, Division of Surgery and Interventional Science at University College London, Dr. Samuel Peretsman, urologist at Urology Specialists of the Carolinas, Dr. Stephen Scionti, urologist at Scionti Prostate Center, and the Company’s CEO Dr. Mark Carol illustrated and discussed clinical and business model approaches to prostate focal therapy. Further conversations were held at the SCM booth with several dozen practitioners related to developing prostate ablation programs in their local communities and across the U.S. Dr. Carol commented positively on the state of the urology market and the AUA convention. “All factors seem to be coming to a tipping point at the same time: the nearing of the FDA’s decision on our Sonablate HIFU device, clinical support for partial gland ablation, market readiness for the technology, the need for new, game-changing technology, and SonaCare’s readiness to manufacture and ship product.”