ATLANTA and WESTCHESTER, Ill., June 2 /PRNewswire/ -- BrainLAB AG, a global leader in image-guided medical technology, today announced that it will showcase its new iPlan Flow software at this year's American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. This FDA-approved software provides physicians with the ability to accurately locate where and how medications need to be administered in order to precisely treat brain tumors. To date, clinical trials in both Germany and the United States have highlighted the potential of the treatment.
According to the Central Brain Tumor Registry of the United States (2004-5), approximately 40,000 new brain tumors are diagnosed each year in the United States. While surgical technology continues to advance, the accurate treatment of brain tumors and neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease remains a challenge. This is largely due to the Blood Brain Barrier (BBB) -- a tight coating of blood vessels that protects the brain from foreign substances, preventing potentially effective treatments from entering the brain. iPlan Flow enables physicians to effectively circumvent the BBB and supports targeted delivery of larger drug molecules to affected areas in the brain.
Successful treatment of brain tumors through drug delivery directly depends on precision and accurate dosage. Clinical experience, however, has shown that it is extraordinarily difficult to achieve sufficient drug concentration in the correct areas as the fluid dynamics differ throughout different regions of the brain and from patient to patient. Using magnetic resonance imaging to render an individual three-dimensional map of the patient's brain, physicians can calculate the required distribution patterns of the medication. The optimal site for medication delivery in the brain can now be pre-operatively identified making the process considerably safer and more effective.
"The key to successful treatment of cancer sites in the brain is in precise drug delivery," says Dr. Andrew E. Sloan, neurosurgeon at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, FL. "iPlan Flow is the tool that helps us get the drug to wherever we want it to go."
iPlan Flow is the latest module to be added to the BrainLAB iPlan software platform which is designed with workflow-optimized architecture to guide physicians through the entire planning process. It offers unique diagnostic image handling and processing tools, such as automatic image fusion of all available image data, human atlas-based automatic organ segmentation and tracking of patients' white matter brain fibers. In addition to iPlan Flow, the iPlan platform offers advanced radiosurgery dose planning and image guided micro-invasive surgery. This enables the integration of three different therapy possibilities, which gives physicians the tools to determine the best possible treatment option for each patient.
"The launch of our iPlan Flow software will revolutionize drug delivery to the brain and create opportunities for both pharmaceutical companies and physicians," said Dr. Christoph Pedain, responsible for pharmaceutical guidance technologies at BrainLAB. "We are confident that this software will improve clinical results by optimizing the benefits of leading edge medications."
The new software is scheduled to be available in summer 2006.
About BrainLAB
BrainLAB, a privately held company headquartered in Munich, Germany, was founded in 1989 and is specialized in the development, manufacture, and marketing of medical technology for radiosurgery / radiotherapy, orthopedics, neurosurgery, and ENT. Among the products developed by BrainLAB are software and hardware components for image-guided surgery and radiotherapy as well as integrated systems for stereotactic radiosurgery. With around 2,280 systems installed in over 65 countries, BrainLAB is among the market leaders in image-guided medical technology. BrainLAB today employs around 740 people worldwide and has 15 offices across Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia.
For more information, visit BrainLAB at http://www.brainlab.com .
BrainLAB AGCONTACT: Gabriella Cyranski of BrainLAB inc., +1-708-486-0114,cyranski@brainlab.com , or David Gollom for BrainLAB, +1-416-644-2267,dgollom@highroad.com
Web site: http://www.brainlab.com//
