RaySearch Laboratories AB (publ) announces that Westdeutsches Protonentherapiezentrum Essen (WPE) in Germany, a subsidiary of University Hospital Essen, has commenced routine clinical operations with the RayStation® treatment planning system from RaySearch. The first clinical treatment generated with the help of RayStation® was carried out in January 2015 and the first patient was a four-year-old boy with a malignant brain tumor who received radiation therapy for the entire craniospinal volume.
WPE, being the first university-based proton therapy center in Germany with three gantries and one fixed beam line, started treating patients in mid-2013 and has to date treated more than 150 patients with proton beam therapy. The proton therapy delivered at WPE represents one of the most advanced forms of external radiation therapy where the tumor is irradiated with high precision by scanned or scattered proton beams. The radiation dose can thereby be delivered more precisely and as a result, the unwanted dose to healthy tissues is reduced, leading to a risk reduction of treatment-related side effects.
WPE was the very first clinic to select RayStation® as treatment planning platform for its clinical operations. The functionality specification for WPE spans the entire spectrum of advanced treatment planning such as model-based segmentation, atlas-based segmentation, robust optimization, deformable registration, dose accumulation and treatment adaptation. With the most recent additions to the RayStation® system all of these features can now be employed for clinical use at WPE.
Prof. Dr. Beate Timmermann, Medical Director at WPE, comments: “With RayStation® we’re able to manage more types of cancer than before. This gives hope to patients with tumors in the central nervous system or sarcomas among others. A development like this was only possible due to the intense partnership between our doctors and physicists and the staff of RaySearch.”
Prof. Dr. mult Eckhard Nagel, Medical Director of the University Hospital Essen, adds: “We are very proud that WPE is the first proton therapy center in Europe that uses RayStation®. This offers us the possibility to help much more patients with cancer than before and opens the way for successful cancer therapies even under difficult conditions.”
Johan Löf, CEO of RaySearch adds: “WPE is a very special center for us as they were the first to select RayStation®. They have built up a state-of-the-art facility and we are very proud that all of the advanced features and tools that we discussed when we first entered this partnership have now been realized and are used every day to give cancer patients better treatments.”
About the University Hospital of Essen
As a maximum care hospital, The University Hospital of Essen (UK Essen) is currently the largest university centred in one location in the Ruhr region and therefore “the Hospital of the metropolitan Ruhr area“. With its 1,300 beds, the hospital treats around 50,000 inpatients and 165,000 outpatients each year. The total of 5,800 experts working in the most varied disciplines in 26 clinics and 23 institutes are a guarantee for excellent, interdisciplinary diagnostics and therapy in line with state-of-the-art research. The triad of research, teaching and healthcare constitutes the overarching field of the entire work at UK Essen – while always focusing on the individual. In addition to the research field of genetic medicine, immunology and infectiology, UK Essen has also successfully concentrated for a number of years on the three priority areas of oncology, cardiovascular diseases and transplants. With the West German Tumour Centre Essen, Germany’s largest tumour centre, the West German Heart Centre Essen, which performs more than 2,000 operations per year, and the top international transplant centre, where all the vital organs, i.e. liver international, kidney, pancreas, heart and lungs, are transplanted, UK Essen has built up an outstanding position.
About RayStation®
RayStation® integrates all RaySearch’s advanced treatment planning solutions into a flexible treatment planning system. It combines unique features such as multi-criteria optimization tools with full support for 4D adaptive radiation therapy. It also includes functionality such as RaySearch’s market-leading algorithms for IMRT and VMAT optimization and highly accurate dose engines for photon, electron and proton therapy. The system is built on the latest software architecture and has a graphical user interface offering state-of-the-art usability.
About RaySearch
RaySearch Laboratories is a medical technology company that develops advanced software solutions for improved radiation therapy of cancer. RaySearch markets the RayStation® treatment planning system to clinics all over the world. In addition, RaySearch’s products are distributed through licensing agreements with leading medical technology companies such as Philips, Nucletron, IBA, Varian and Brainlab. To date, 15 products have been launched via partners and RaySearch’s software is used by over 2,500 clinics in more than 65 countries. RaySearch was founded in 2000 as a spin-off from Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and the company is listed in the Small Cap segment on Nasdaq Stockholm.
For more information about RaySearch, visit www.raysearchlabs.com
For further information, please contact:
Johan Löf, President and CEO, RaySearch Laboratories AB
Telephone: +46 (0)8-510 530 00
johan.lof@raysearchlabs.com