A Medical Device Daily

Patients in France and the UK have become the first patients in their respective countries to be treated using the RapidArc technology from Varian Medical Systems (Palo Alto, California) for intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).

A 60-year-old prostate cancer patient from Montpellier, France, was the first to be treated in France. Each of his treatments at the CRLC Val D'Aurelle-Paul Lamarque in Montpellier took just 75 seconds, several times faster than conventional IMRT treatments.

Dr. Pascal Fenoglietto, the hospital's chief medical physicist for scientific projects, presented the case to colleagues at the annual meeting of the French Society of Radiation Oncologists (SFRO) in Paris last month.

"The treatments went extremely well and the patient was very pleased because compared to conventional IMRT it was three times quicker," Fenoglietto said. "We are now able to use the time we save on treatment delivery to take more images and increase the quality of our care."

Professor Jean-Bernard Dubois, head of the radiation oncology department and managing director of the hospital, added, "The radiation therapists were also very pleased because it is a simpler treatment for them to deliver."

With RapidArc, Varian's Clinac medical linear accelerator can target radiation beams at a tumor while making one continuous rotation around the patient. The company said conventional IMRT treatments are slower and more difficult for radiotherapy radiographers because they target tumors using a complex sequence of fixed beams from multiple angles.

RapidArc technology allows more control to conform the dose more closely to the size, shape, and location of the tumor. Faster treatment also reduces the time for motion within the anatomy, and laboratory studies suggest that faster dose delivery kills cancer cells more effectively.

"With this technology we have the opportunity to improve outcomes while offering more patients greater access to advanced care," Fenoglietto said. "We're excited to be the first hospital in France and the fourth in Europe to offer this treatment to patients."

The hospital is one of the seven members of Varian's RapidArc Council of centers that helped develop the clinical use of the new treatment technology. It carried out the treatment on one of the four Varian linear accelerators in the department, using French-language treatment planning and oncology information management software.

More than 700 patients have been treated with IMRT at the French cancer center since its introduction in 2001 and there are plans to replace all conventional IMRT treatments for tumors in the pelvic region with RapidArc treatments.

A 65-year-old grandfather was the first patient to undergo the treatment in the UK. From Warrington in Cheshire, he received the treatment at Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology in the Wirral, the first UK cancer center to introduce the new treatment technique.

"RapidArc is a major advance in radiotherapy technology that will change the way radiotherapy is planned and delivered for selected patients," said Angela Heaton, research radiographer at Clatterbridge Centre for Oncology. "The benefit to patients is significant — not only will they need to lie on the treatment table for considerably less time but we may also be able to treat more patients as treatment times are reduced."

According to Heaton, the "beam-on" time for the patient was reduced from nearly four minutes with conventional IMRT to just 1 minute, 10 seconds with RapidArc.

Imaging partnership expanded

TomTec Imaging Systems (Munich, Germany), a provider of medical imaging software solutions, and Advanced Medical Imaging Development (AMID; Sulmona, Italy), which is focused on innovations in medical image quantification techniques, have signed a long-term agreement to expand their previous partnership.

The new agreement, signed in late September, covers all fields of medical imaging and will combine the innovation and business capabilities of both companies. TomTec will be the exclusive channel for all AMID medical imaging technology to clinical end-users as well as to all business partners.

"We are excited about the partnership" said Bernhard Mumm, president/CTO of TomTec. "Combining AMID's strength and TomTec's technology will lead into new, exciting 2-D and 3-D quantification tools in echo and MRI. We will offer our clinical customers and our OEM partner's new and better software solutions to enhance diagnostic confidence and to streamline patient workflow."

Dr. Giovanni Tonti, CEO at AMID, said, "The long-term partnership with TomTec was a logical step for us. We can now focus our core activities and ... skills on the development of innovative solutions. With TomTec we have now the perfect partner to bring our combined 'High-Tec' products to the market."

The first product based on this cooperation, TomTec's 2-D Cardiac Performance Analysis software was shown at this week's EuroEcho Congress in Lyon, France.

Leukemia panel is CE-marked

Asuragen (Austin, Texas) said that the Signature LTx v2.0 Leukemia Translocation Panel has been released as a CE IVD product under the European Directive on In Vitro Diagnostic Medical Devices.

The CE-marked Signature LTx v2.0 is a qualitative in vitro diagnostic device for use in a clinical laboratory to identify specific fusion transcripts in total RNA from whole blood or bone marrow to aid in the clinical diagnosis of translocation positive leukemias. Clinical validation studies showed 100% diagnostic accuracy in comparison to standard cytogenetic methods. This represents the world's first Luminex-based molecular oncology IVD product.

The assay is a multiplex reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) amplification, followed by multiplex amplicon detection on the Luminex 100 IS or 200 system.

"Standard cytogenetic analysis by karyotyping or fluorescence in situ hybridization can be laborious or require multiple successive hybridizations to detect a given chromosomal translocation. [Our] expertise in multiplex RNA-based assays enables the rapid molecular diagnosis of leukemia fusion transcripts and therefore improves workflow and efficiency in the clinical laboratory while nicely complementing standard diagnostic hematopathology testing," said Asuragen President Rollie Carlson, PhD.