Business opportunity
Brain tumors are one of the deadliest forms of cancer and the primary goal of treatment is simply to decelerate tumor growth. Still, after decades of research, only about half of the patients respond to any form of treatment and the survival outcome for this patient group has hardly improved.
A reason for this paradox is a one-size-fits-all treatment decision-making process that does not do justice to the time of diagnosis and inherent heterogeneity of the disease. The critical challenge for the patient and treating physician however, is the lack of a robust approach for assessing treatment response early. At the early stages, cancers can be small, asymptomatic, and undetectable by conventional means. Today, up to a year of follow-up exams may be required to confirm whether the treatment works by conventional diagnostic methods. Moreover, a new drug or change in treatment have little impact if the intervention is initiated at the late stages in the tumor’s life cycle, where the lesion may have become resistant or developed favorable conditions to metastasize. For a patient with only months, up to a few years left to live at best, this timeline is simply unacceptable. A new diagnostic paradigm is needed to catch tumor growth before the cancer becomes symptomatic and clinically diagnosable.
We offer a fully automatic decision-support system for early detection of brain-tumor growth and treatment response. Inven2 seeks partners for co-development and/or licensing of the technology. We are interested to validate the technology applicability together with user partners.
Technology description
Leading scientists at Oslo University Hospital have developed a tool named CHRONOS, that can reveal tumor growth up to half a year before it becomes available by traditional means. CHRONOS quantifies and outlines pathology induced by structural changes based on magnetic resonance imaging, advanced mathematical models and machine learning. The working prototype is about to be demonstrated directly in the clinical workflow.
Advantages
- Early assessment of tumor progression and treatment response
- Tailor-made personalized medicine
- Repeatable and robust, not vulnerable to subjective perceptions
