MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION - Medical Device Daily

MEDICAL DEVICE INNOVATION 2010
Non-magnetic motor to power
new prostate cancer device
By AMANDA PEDERSEN
Medical Device Daily Staff Writer
With the side effects of current prostate cancer treatments
sometimes worse than the disease itself – incontinence
and impotence, to name just a couple – several companies
are trying to find a cure that either eliminates or significantly
reduces these problems.
Profound Medical (PMI; Toronto), a spin-off of
Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre (also Toronto) founded
last fall, knew when it decided to develop a device to treat
prostate cancer that it would require the kind of visibility
only found with MRI. That presented the challenge of
designing a device that is completely MRI-compatible,
including the motor.
As a solution to that problem, the company partnered
with Johnson Medtech (Shelton, Connecticut), the medical
products division of Johnson Electric, which makes nonmagnetic
Nanomotion actuators that are being used to
power PMI’s MRI-compatible image-guided tumor treatment
device.
According to PMI, the device is expected to treat
prostate cancer in a fraction of the time and cost of existing
methods, based on extensive modeling, simulation and
pre-clinical trials.
Johnson Medtech said its Nanomotion actuators enable
the precision of motion and accuracy of treatment necessary
for safely conducting the image-guided prostate cancer
therapy within the strong magnetic field of the MRI.
CTO Michael Bronskill, PhD, and Rajiv Chopra, PhD,
chief science officer, initially developed PMI’s device at the
Sunnybrook center. The company said it is working toward
FDA approval for the device.
“When designing our prostate cancer treatment device,
we knew that it would require the visibility exclusively
available in an MRI environment. However, conventional
motors were a roadblock to creating a working proof-ofconcept
device and bringing this important development
to reality – and only Johnson Medtech could provide the
solution,” Bronskill said. “Johnson Medtech’s Nanomotion
non-magnetic motors provide the motion necessary to
enable our tissue coagulation device to effectively treat
prostate cancer patients within the MRI environment, and
with a degree of precision that is crucial to success.”
Alan Feinstein, president of the Nanomotion division at
Johnson Medtech, told Medical Device Daily that the company
has been working with Sunnybrook, and now PMI, for
about four or five years to develop this prostate cancer
device. He said it is one of “numerous” devices that Johnson
Medtech has helped with because the device is required to
function in the magnetic field of MRI path and the motor
and the entire mechanism needs to be nonmagnetic.
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PMI’s device uses an MRI for imaging and a planar ultrasound
applicator for treatment. The MRI guides the probe
that heats the cancerous tissue to destroy the diseased
area, according to the company.
In the past, the magnetic nature of electric motors and
their metal components made it impossible for motorized
medical devices to function within the MRI environment. To
overcome this challenge, PMI selected Nanomotion’s HR2-1-
N-3 piezo ultrasonic non-magnetic motors to rotate the
device’s probe. When combined with the real-time noninvasive
visibility into the human body provided by the
MRI, the sophisticated low-speed Nanomotion actuators in
PMI’s device enable medical professionals to operate the
probe at a microscopic scale to conduct this procedure, the
companies said.
Feinstein said the motor has a non-magnetic metal
body as well as some ceramic material and some plastics.
According to PMI, prostate cancer afflicts millions of
men around the world, with an estimated 400,000 new
cases diagnosed each year. Several prostate cancer treatments
are available, including radiation, the company
noted. But even the treatments with high success levels
leave the patient with enduring and sometimes permanent
impotency and incontinence problems in the vast majority
of cases.
PMI says its minimally-invasive thermal ablation device
powered by Nanomotion’s motors treats prostate cancer as
well as or better than radiation, and projects to deliver significantly
fewer side effects based on pre-clinical research.
While some radiation methods often require up to 12 weekly
one-hour treatments, PMI’s device completes the treatment
process in just one visit, and with far greater accuracy
for targeting the affected area, the company said.
“Scientists have worked for years to develop a prostate
cancer treatment that yields no inconvenient side effects to
the patient, but the extreme degree of precision required to
target and treat a small area has been limited by human
ability and legacy devices,” said Jim Dick, senior VP of
Johnson Electric and chairman of Nanomotion. “Working
together with Profound Medical, Johnson Medtech is proud
to be part of the design team that solved the challenges of
delivering a device to treat prostate cancer victims more
quickly and safely.”
Just last year a U.S. task force recommended that men
75 or older should not even be screened for prostate cancer
because of evidence of more harm than benefit from
carrying out this procedure and providing therapy based
on a positive diagnosis. These harms are especially important,
the task force noted, because some men who are treated
for prostate cancer would never have developed symptoms
in their lifetime.
PMI says its technology combines the therapeutic benefits
of thermal ultrasound with the “unparalleled accuracy,
sensitivity, and precision of MRI to allow the most precise
treatment of a region or the whole prostate.” This accuracy
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