2022, A Year in Review

We have come to the end of another year and this has been the best one yet for Leo Cancer Care.

First of all, we must thank our colleagues, business partners, investors and friends who have supported us over the year, we couldn’t have done it without you! Now let's take a look at some of the highlights from the last year.

An award-winning start to the year

We started off the year on a high with a Good Design award win for our upright radiation therapy treatment solution, Marie. Our chosen partner for product design was DCA Design International, a leading product design and development consultancy, with many years of experience working within the medical sector. 

“Winning an iF design award in April 2021 was a fantastic achievement, following this with a Good Design Award in January 2022– one of the world’s most prestigious and oldest design awards - is outstanding! These recognitions of design excellence are a testament to the intelligent approach to design development and the collective team’s passion for ensuring a truly integrated technical, visual, and user experience-based design”.

Malcolm Boyd Senior Sector Manager - Medical and Scientific from DCA.

First customer sites announced

In the summer of 2022, we announced two landmark deals, one with UW Health and the other with McLaren Healthcare. 

Members of the Leo Cancer Care team attended the Groundbreaking Ceremony for the new UW Health Proton Therapy Center which is set to start treating patients with our Marie system in 2024, pending relevant regulatory approvals.

“This new approach has the potential to make proton treatment more effective, more accessible and much more patient-friendly. We are excited to be leading the way on this concept that could become a model for other health systems around the country”

Dr Paul Harari, Chair, Department of Human Oncology, UW School of Medicine and Public Health & Radiation Oncologist at UW Health. 

McLaren Healthcare signed a deal for two Marie systems that will be installed in a room that was earmarked for one rotating gantry meaning they can double the patient throughput in that space.

“McLaren and Karmanos are committed to delivering world-class, comprehensive cancer care right in Genesee County,” said Chris Candela, President and CEO of McLaren Flint. “The aim of our innovative partnership with Leo Cancer Care is to provide greater access to proton therapy for patients throughout Michigan and around the globe.” 

Our events were truly eventFULL

We exhibited at a number of the largest radiation oncology events across the globe and showcased our full Marie solution in all her glory for the first time. The two biggest events for us were ESTRO and ASTRO, which were filled with important announcements and an unprecedented number of attendees trying out our upright patient positioning system for themselves.

At ESTRO we held an exclusive research partner presentation and demonstration with Vincent Gregoire and Sophie Boisbouvier at our booth which drew quite a crowd. At ASTRO we debuted, for the first time, upright treatment planning in action thanks to our partnership with RaySearch and announced our new partnership with Mevion which is set to make proton therapy ultra-compact and more accessible than ever before.

A bright new future for proton therapy as it becomes ultra-compact

Leo Cancer Care, Mevion Medical Systems and RaySearch are entering a spearheading partnership that looks set to open up a bright new future for proton therapy treatment. The main barriers to implementing proton therapy are the size and costs of the technology. The Mevion S250-FIT Proton Therapy System™ with its smaller footprint for patient positioning and beam delivery offers new care opportunities for healthcare providers.

The smaller and more cost-effective solution – with Leo Cancer Care’s Marie system and CT scanner paired with Mevion’s smallest-in-the-world self-shielded proton accelerator and supported by RaySearch treatment planning capabilities– could bring a new lease of life to an industry challenged by the size and costs to implement and maintain.

In pointing to Mevion Medical Systems’ “proven 18-year track record of technological innovation,” CEO and President, Tina Yu, PhD, said:

“We are excited to be disrupting the industry once again by shrinking proton therapy even more and by making this coveted technology much more accessible to patients who need it the most. Imagine the potential of bringing proton therapy to your cancer center within a year and having it fully integrated with other radiation modalities. Leo Cancer Care’s upright patient positioning system complements Mevion’s core technologies very well. They share our vision of democratizing proton therapy. We look forward to a long and rewarding partnership with Leo Cancer Care.”

Stanford University Hospital will be the first customer to receive this solution. Stanford has been waiting for many years to be able to offer proton therapy at its facility, but space and financial barriers had always been too large to overcome, until now.

Positive results and research projects on upright patient positioning for cancer treatments

An exciting upright consortium was started this year which brings together academic institutions, plus immobilisation and radiotherapy businesses to share best practices and research into upright patient positioning, imaging and treatments.

Prof Heidi Probst and Jo McNamara from Sheffield Hallam University joined Leo Cancer Care’s Tracy Underwood and Jemma Nunn in conducting a research study considering how our upright patient positioning system might be used to treat patients requiring breast radiotherapy, in the upright orientation.

Excitingly our Senior Physicist, Tracy Underwood, was awarded a £1.3 million UKRI ‘Future Leaders Fellowship’ Grant to develop translational research at Leo Cancer Care over an initial 5 years, with the possibility of a 3-year extension. Her fellowship research will be divided into 3 key work packages: patient immobilisation, upright Radiotherapy workflows and supine-to-upright image registration.

Our Chief Scientific Officer, Niek Schreuder, released an exciting whitepaper that showed significant benefits for treating prostate cancer patients in the upright orientation. The paper is in the process of being peer-reviewed and early data suggests the potential to reduce toxicity to surrounding organs and lessen the need for the patient to have a full bladder during treatment which can be very uncomfortable. You can read the paper by clicking here. 

But most exciting of all had to be the release of the first research paper from Sophie Boisbouvier, our research partner at Centre Léon Bérard, which highlighted a number of significant benefits to treating pelvic cancer patients in the upright orientation from both a clinical reproducibility and patient experience perspective. Read the full paper by clicking here.

Wishing you all a Happy Christmas and New Year

We cannot thank all of our colleagues, business and research partners and followers enough for the hard work and support you have shown and provided us with this year. We have achieved so much together and 2023 looks set to be an even bigger year if you can believe it!

We hope you all enjoy the festive period however, you chose to celebrate it, and here’s to a successful 2023.