Royal Philips (NYSE:PHG) said today it expanded its master research agreement with Yale School of Medicine to include a new research program looking to develop innovations in interventional oncology.
The multi-year cancer research program aims to explore new concepts in image-guided therapies, diagnostic imaging and informatics, Philips said, and will engage with multiple research groups at Yale.
“Over the past few years there have been significant developments in image-guided therapy to locally treat tumors, with the result that interventional oncology procedure volumes have grown rapidly. However, the biggest remaining challenge is that it is difficult to predict the effectiveness of the procedure. Together with Philips, we are embarking on a new multi-year research program with the aim to redefine and standardize this type of minimally-invasive treatment to achieve more predictable and better controlled procedure outcomes, and ultimately enhanced patient care,” research program lead Jeff Geschwind said in a press release.
A team of clinical scientists from Philips will operate with Geschwild’s team at Yale in a recently established facility seeking to shift research results into innovations for patient care, the company said.
“We are on a mission to enhance existing interventional oncology procedures and enable new ones that offer predictable and effective minimally invasive options for treating cancerous lesions. Our new collaboration with Prof. Geschwind and his team will bring together different scientific, engineering and medical specialties with the aim of developing, validating and translating breakthrough technologies for these targeted cancer therapies,” Philips image guided therapy GM Bert van Meurs said in prepared remarks.
The collaborative effort will focus on liver cancer, specifically producing advanced diagnostic imaging and real-time guidance during transarterial chemoembolization procedures to boost the efficacy of the treatment, the company said.
The group hopes that producing advanced imaging options for the liver cancer treatment will both improve the efficacy of the procedure and boost adoption of new minimally invasive cancer treatment options.
