"Background and state-of-the-art technology:
Cancerous tumors are a massive contributor to mortality rates worldwide and a socioeconomic burden on healthcare systems. Currently, the diagnosis, staging and treatment assessment of various cancerous tumors rely on the PET/CT (Positron emission tomography / Computer tomography) scanner, considered the gold-standard. However, this technology suffers from significant amount of clinical limitations and disadvantages: besides being very expensive, it exposes patients to harmful ionizing radiation; it requires hospitals to be equipped with a “hot lab” to handle radioactive material; it provides limited information about cancerous lesions, which do not include grade or aggressiveness. Moreover, this method requires weeks, sometimes even months, to determine the response to treatment.
A viable alternative to PET/CT for cancer staging and treatment assessment emerged a decade ago, when a technological breakthrough in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) succeeded in increasing the MRI signal of target molecules by over 10,000-fold. This increase in sensitivity, termed ""hyperpolarization"", enables targeted molecular imaging, and proved successful in assessing tumor aggressiveness and response to therapy. Unfortunately, this promising method is still limited by the long time required to achieve hyperpolarization and the high cost and complexity of the equipment needed for this purpose.
Breakthrough technology by NVision:
A decade long groundbreaking research at Ulm University (UUlm) in Germany and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI) in Israel in the field of diamond quantum physics has led to the discovery that the controlling properties of nitrogen-vacancies (NV) centers in diamonds over the surrounding nuclear spins could also be used to transfer the NV optical polarization to other molecules to achieve first-of-a-kind room temperature hyperpolarization of a variety of molecules. The subsequent experimental confirmation of the science has led to the foundation of NVision Imaging Technologies, a spin-off start-up from Ulm University, in 2015 by scientists and business entrepreneurs from Germany and Israel.
NVision leverages the transformative features of diamond NVs to offer a breakthrough in Hyperpolarized MRI - a new Diamond-based polarizer with significant advantages: - (1) Low cost (up to x2.5 lower unit cost than PET/CT); (2) High-throughput (minutes instead of hours to polarize) and (3) Scalability (bench-top instead of room-size) polarizer that fit any MRI lab
By offering an efficient, robust and flexible polarization technology, NVision aims to accelerate research of Hyperpolarized MRI probes and to enable their widespread use. Thus, unlocking the full clinical potential of Hyperpolarized MRI: (1) Viable non-radioactive (safe) metabolic imaging modality (2) Ability to visualize critical metabolic information, indicative of stage and malignancy of tumors (that is unavailable through PET/CT) and (3) Real-time monitoring of treatment efficacy, a real step change in personalized medicine (feedback in days vs. months through PET/CT).
Goals of QUSMI:
The prototype of the Diamond Polarizer is currently under development by NVision. the FET Innovation Launchpad project QUSMI focused on the commercial exploitation of the technology: by assessing the customer needs, reaching out to strategic partners, consolidating the IP portfolio and strategy and developing a sound business plan, QUSMI has placed NVision in a position to attract private investors and paved the way for the commercialization of Diamond-based Hyperpolarized MRI technology.
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