MADISON, Wis.–Voximetry Incorporated has been awarded nearly $400,000 from the U.S. National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services to improve the quantitative accuracy of nuclear medicine SPECT/CT images used in the planning and assessment of Radiopharmaceutical Therapy (RPT).
This is the third significant grant or contract awarded to the company by the NIH. Voximetry is a young Healthtech software company that has used previous NIH funding to develop Torch™, a software application for the assessment of patient absorbed dose during a course of Radiopharmaceutical Therapy (RPT). The work funded by this new contract may improve the accuracy of dosimetry results generated with Torch by reducing noise and increasing resolution in the imported patient SPECT/CT images.
According to Dr. Sue Wallace, Voximetry CEO, “We’re ready to build upon the work we’ve already completed for Torch with prior support from the NIH SBIR program. This new NCI contract will further expand the Torch™ platform by accelerating the focus on the quantitation of SPECT/CT while leveraging our expertise in GPU-acceleration of Monte Carlo algorithms.”
According to the Society of Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging, the field of RPT has been expanding rapidly in the U.S. with approximately 175,000 patients per year positively indicated for RPT including lymphoma, and thyroid, liver, and Neuroendocrine tumors.
In June 2021 Novartis announced that results of the Phase III VISION study evaluating 177Lu-PSMA-617, plus best standard of care (SOC), demonstrated significant improvement in overall survival compared to SOC alone, in certain patients with progressive prostate cancer. FDA is expected to clear this Novartis therapeutic for clinical use in 2022. It is estimated that 178,000 prostate cancer patients per year may benefit from RPT with this new therapeutic agent.
“So many patients need this. We built TORCH so physicians could prescribe personalized treatment plan objectives for absorbed dose to tumors and maximum limits for non-target critical structures. With improved quality of the patient SPECT/CT data, Torch may improve the accuracy of the information we provide to the clinicians on how to achieve their treatment objectives. We’re confident we can raise the bar on what is accepted as common practice,” said Dr. Joe Grudzinski, Chief Innovation Officer at Voximetry.
This Phase I NCI contract will fund all development and preliminary testing of Voximetry’s Torch software with integrated GPU-accelerated Monte Carlo image reconstruction algorithms.
About Voximetry: Based in Madison, Wisconsin, Voximetry is a Healthtech software company commercializing complex algorithms on high-speed Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). Currently focused on radiation transport science, Voximetry is advancing patient-specific treatment planning in late-stage cancer patients. Torch has not yet been submitted to FDA for review of its Indications for Use and is therefore NOT suitable for clinical use.