The Stanford Cancer Institute at the Stanford University School of Medicine is the first hospital in the nation to purchase the X1, from RefleXion Medical, a system that uses biology-guided radiotherapy (BgRT) that combines PET imaging with targeted radiation therapy in one session.
RefleXion Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer, Sam Mazin, PhD, first thought of using PET, widely considered the gold standard for diagnosing cancer, to instead treat tumors while attending a radiation physics lecture during his postdoctoral tenure. As the professor explained the difficulty in seeing tumors during cancer treatment, an idea began to form that he would pursue in earnest a few years later.
“The idea was to use individual emissions that make up a partially formed PET image, and are generated by the tumor, as a homing signal or biological marker to quickly guide radiotherapy to that location,” explained Mazin. “In essence, turning cancer on itself to destroy it.”
Mazin’s thought was to use PET in an entirely new way to solve one of the greatest challenges in radiotherapy: treating multiple tumors in the same session, even those in motion, so that radiotherapy could be offered to stage 4 cancer patients, for the first time, as a new treatment choice. RefleXion’s BgRT technology could one day expand radiotherapy from a treatment reserved for early-stage cancer, to an option for patients with multiple solid tumors throughout the body.
The RefleXion X1 received FDA marketing clearance on March 13, 2020, for stereotactic body radiotherapy (SBRT), stereotactic radiosurgery (SRS) and intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).
For more information, visit RefleXion Medical.
