The Microsphere Product The product being deve

The Microsphere Product

The product being developed by IUTM is a microsphere intended for use as a means of micro-arterial brachytherapy in the treatment of soft tissue cancer tumors in the liver. Soft tissue tumors are connected to the blood supply and this kind of therapy is administered through the patient’s blood supply system.
Soft tissue tumors are among the most difficult forms of cancer to treat. If not cured by initial therapy, these tumors eventually become unresponsive to chemotherapy and spread (metastasize) throughout the body. While there has been some progress in recent years in treating these cancers with surgery and chemotherapy, the five-year survival rates remain less than five percent. We believe that there is a strong demand from patients and physicians confronting this type of cancer for effective, easy-to-use therapies with acceptable side effects. We believe that if and when it is fully developed and approved for use the IUTM product will provide such a therapy if developed.
Currently the standard treatment for patients with advanced cancerous tumors is chemotherapy, which is not specific to (that is, does not discriminate as to) various types of cancer and has side effects that damage or destroy many normal cells as well as the cancer cells. Thus, chemotherapy may result in additional illness and even death. High doses of chemotherapy have typically resulted in extended, unpleasant and sometimes life-threatening hospital stays. Patients often require expensive, invasive medical attention before they recover and are discharged to their homes.
An alternative therapy, radiation, is most often administered by delivering a beam from outside of the patient’s body (“external beam radiation”) through the patient's body to the cancer tumor. Cells do not become resistant to radiation as they do to chemotherapy. Therefore, radiation delivered to the cell in sufficient doses will cause the death of the cell. However, because the radiation originates from outside the body, the healthy tissues surrounding the tumor and those between the source and the tumor also receive radiation and suffer damage that can cause significant adverse side effects.
Micro-arterial brachytherapy is an improvement over both chemotherapy and external beam radiation. In this form of treatment, microspheres bearing radiation are delivered directly through the bloodstream to the site of a cancer tumor, thereby avoiding healthy tissues. Micro-arterial brachytherapy has the additional significant advantage of being administered in an outpatient procedure, with most patients being able to return home the day of treatment.
We believe that if and when the development of the IUTM product has been completed and it is approved by the FDA and used in the treatment of patients, it will have significant competitive advantages over microspheres now in the market.