Newswise — With a donation as focused as the technology it seeks to advance, the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation has pledged $3.1 million toward an MR-Guided Focused Ultrasound Surgery Center at the University of Virginia.
The Center will specialize in research, training and patient care using MR Guided Focused Ultrasound, a medical break-through that combines MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) with ultra-high frequency sound waves in a new kind of therapy.
Focused Ultrasound lets doctors treat tumors noninvasively, employing beams of ultrasound instead of a scalpel or radiation. Each of the high-frequency sound beams " up to one thousand of them passes through healthy tissue harmlessly. But where they converge, at the site of the tumor, they generate just enough heat to destroy it. This is similar to using a magnifying glass to focus beams of sunlight and burn a hole in a leaf.
The UVA facility, one of three Centers of Excellence that the Foundation plans to establish in the next two years, will treat women with uterine fibroids, the first of this type of procedure to receive FDA approval.
In addition, the Center will be conducting research on the use of focused ultrasound surgery for other tumors: brain, breast, prostate, bone and liver. It will also explore using it on stroke, epilepsy, chronic pain, and Parkinson's disease and essential tremor.
More than four years in the making, the UVA Center is slated to be up and running by September of 2009. Its total cost will exceed $8 million. This includes the $3.1 million contribution by the foundation, plus its research and fellowship grants, and $4 million provided by the Commonwealth of Virginia.
Other contributions will include "in kind" giving by InSightec, the company that manufactures the focused ultrasound equipment; and GE Healthcare, the MRI maker.
"This remarkable center isn't just something that will offer real 21st century healthcare to our citizens" , commented Bill Howell, speaker of the Commonwealth's House of Delegates. "It's a smart investment that puts Virginia at the head of the pack in a major new high-tech field."
A key goal of the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation, according to Eben Alexander, MD, its Director of Research and Education, is to shorten the time it will take to get widespread use of focused ultrasound surgery. "This technology is too promising to let it languish for years while it proves its worth," Dr. Alexander added.
According to Steven DeKosky, MD, Dean of UVA's School of Medicine, "our new Focused Ultrasound Surgery Center will be a wonderful opportunity for physicians and scientists from a variety of specialties to collaborate in high-technology translational research -- the sophisticated application of what's learned in the laboratory to clinical studies and then into everyday use in treating patients. The Center is a great example of what UVA is doing to become a major research university."
"How big is Focused Ultrasound," rhetorically asks James Larner M.D., Chairman of UVA's Department of Radiation Oncology and Director of the Center. "It's possibly the biggest thing in therapy since the scalpel."
About the Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation
The Focused Ultrasound Surgery Foundation's mission is to develop new applications for and accelerate the adoption of MRgFUS. The foundation's activities include organizing and funding translational and clinical research, providing training fellowships, hosting symposia and workshops, maintaining a website and newsletter, establishing a worldwide registry of treated patients, sponsoring a grass roots patient support organization, and establishing new Centers of Excellence.
About Magnetic Resonance Guided Focused Ultrasound (MRgFUS)
MRgFUS is an innovative technology that is poised to revolutionize the treatment of a wide variety of medical disorders by serving as the ultimate in minimally invasive surgery; an alternative to radiation therapy; the means for precisely delivering drugs in high concentrations to the point where they are needed, avoiding systemic toxicity; and, dissolving blood clots and restoring circulation.
MRgFUS holds the potential to treat benign and malignant tumors; to convert metastatic cancer from a lethal disease to a manageable, chronic disorder; reverse the disabling and life threatening neurological deficits from stroke; to alleviate the symptoms of Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, and chronic pain; and to address a host of other disorders ranging from heart disease to diabetes.
The procedure can be performed on an outpatient basis, does not require general anesthesia or incisions, results in minimal discomfort and few complications, and allows rapid recovery.
MRgFUS is the result of the integration of two technologies: high intensity focused ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging. Focused ultrasound technology uses multiple intersecting beams of ultrasound energy focused with extreme precision on a target as small as one millimeter in diameter. Where each individual ultrasound beam passes through the tissue there is no effect, but where they intersect in the body, the focused energy creates a cumulative effect, enabling precise ablation of tissue, highly targeted drug delivery, or liquification of blood clots. Magnetic resonance imaging is used to visualize normal anatomy and abnormal structures within the body, to target the tissue to be treated, to guide and control the treatment interactively, and to evaluate the effectiveness of therapy.
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