Empyrean and MD Anderson will combine their expertise to improve radiation therapy delivery for cancer patients.
Empyrean Medical Systems has entered an exclusive licence and joint development agreement with the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center for the development of new radiation therapy technologies.
Under the collaboration deal, the company and MD Anderson will work together to advance new technologies and products for cancer therapeutics and radiation oncology.
The institutions have complementary research and development expertise that will be combined to advance MD Anderson’s intellectual property for enhancing radiation therapy delivery for cancer patients.
According to the terms of the agreement, Empyrean will have an exclusive licence for the development and commercialisation of MD Anderson’s new method to deliver radiation therapy.
The new approach, known as Magnetically Optimized Very High Energy Electron Therapy (MOVHEET), is said to have the potential to significantly improve the accuracy of radiation delivered from a machine with a similar footprint to conventional options.
MD Anderson Radiation Physics professor Mohammad Salehpour said: “The combined expertise of MD Anderson and Empyrean allows us the opportunity to take advantage of dosimetric characteristics of very high energy electron beams for the treatment of malignant tumours.
“The MOVHEET system is designed from the ground up to deliver both conventional and FLASH dose rate radiotherapy with enhanced precision to increase its efficacy.”
MD Anderson and Empyrean will also use Empyrean’s intellectual property to jointly develop additional technologies to optimise care for cancer patients.
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MD Anderson will obtain an equity interest in Empyrean and also receive certain royalties and other financial considerations.
Empyrean Medical Systems founder, president and CEO Kal Fishman said: “Our goal is to develop multiple state-of-the-art products to deliver optimal radiation therapy for our clinicians and make a real difference for patients and their families.”
In May, MD Anderson researchers developed the Microbubble-assisted UltraSound-guided Immunotherapy of Cancer platform to improve antitumour immune and checkpoint inhibitor responses.
