New company offers hope for ‘safer’ radiotherapy
Posted on 9 July 2008
The partners have developed a gel which acts as a dosimeter — regulating dosage to enable doctors to calculate appropriate levels of intensity modulated radiotherapy (IMRT).
Imagel has been an exciting project and a great story of collaboration
Dr Mark Mortimer
Now a shareholder agreement has been signed to formally establish Imagel Ltd to market the product. Much of the impetus for the spin-out company — and £200,000 of initial funding — has come from the University of York’s commercial exploitation partner IP Group plc.
The gel is, in effect, a ‘phantom patient’ on which doctors can plan and assess a radiotherapy treatment before delivering the radiation to the real patient, thus reducing the risk of unwanted side effects or dangerous mistreatments.
Post-doctoral Fellows Mark Godber and Andrew Wilson, under the guidance of Professor John Goodby at the University of York’s Department of Chemistry, developed the gel, with Non-Clinical Lecturer Dr Gary Liney at the University of Hull. They produced custom software and Magnetic Resonance Imaging protocols to image the gel. Professor Andy Beavis at Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust tested the gel product using the latest radiotherapy techniques.
Imagel was established with the help of the University of York’s Enterprise and Innovation Office, initially using £30,000 from the Yorkshire Forward Bioscience Yorkshire Enterprise Fellowship scheme. Yorkshire Cancer Research and Medipex, the commercialisation arm of Hull and East Yorkshire NHS Trust, are also stakeholders in the new company.
The gel product has been developed to alter when in contact with radiation, and this can then be detected using MRI. It can be used for precise assessment of many radiotherapy treatments, verifying dose delivered and spatial accuracy in three dimensions, before the patient is treated.. Over the past two years the gel has been trialled in eight leading UK radiotherapy centres, and Imagel is now working with medical physicists in a number of leading Oncology departments in health trusts across the UK.
Dr Mark Godber, who is now CEO of Imagel, said: ‘With modern techniques in radiotherapy there is a requirement for improved dosimetry methods. Our gel dosimeter can give radiotherapists more confidence to deliver complex radiotherapy plans, improving success rates while reducing harmful side effects. The investment by IP Group plc has come at a very exciting time for Imagel Ltd, with the sale of our first commercial dosimeter.’
Dr Mark Mortimer, Business Development Manager in the University’s Enterprise and Innovation Office, added: ‘Imagel has been an exciting project and a great story of collaboration. The University of York is pleased to see the partnership between us and IP Group starting to bear fruit with this investment. There is obviously a need for this technology and getting a product to market will have great benefits.’
ENDS
Notes to editors:
- More information on Imagel at www.imagel.co.uk
- The Department of Chemistry at the University of York has an excellent reputation for teaching and research. In the last Research Assessment Exercise the department was awarded a 5 rating. It is led by Royal Society of Chemistry prize-winners in all three branches of physical, organic and inorganic chemistry.
- The Enterprise and Innovation Office at the University of York is a team with recent business and public sector experience. The team is dedicated to working closely with companies and the public sector and is building long term strategic relationships for mutual benefit. It is creating new opportunities for research partnerships, spinning out new companies from University research, licensing intellectual property, identifying new opportunities for Continuing Professional Development programmes and building a growing enterprise culture with placements for students and graduates in Knowledge Transfer Programmes and Shell Technology Enterprise Programmes.
- More about the IP Group plc at www.ip2ipo.com/
- More about the University of Hull at www.hull.ac.uk/
- More about Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust at www.hey.nhs.uk/