Our Approach
Brain Trust as a Catalyst of Groundbreaking Innovation and its Transfer to Patients. AdMeTech’s Scientific Advisory Board, or “Brain Trust”, integrates the expertise and resources of the leading medical institutions into a comprehensive international research program, which facilitates the advancement of prostate cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment. By stimulating multi-disciplinary cross-fertilization and novel ideas, the Brain Trust makes it possible to support the early stages of high-impact research projects, when investment is at its lowest and impact is at its highest, and before other funding entities are prepared to take a risk. The research accomplishments detailed below highlight the critical importance of AdMeTech’s Brain Trust to a cost-effective approach to research support.
Goals
Our research program addresses the fundamental challenges in prostate cancer care by facilitating creation, testing and implementation of advanced prostate imaging technologies for individualized patient care, including:
- Improved early detection of aggressive prostate cancer, which is critical for saving lives;
- Elimination of unnecessary procedures for benign and indolent disease;
- Improved guidance and monitoring of clinical care, including early assessment of cancer response to treatment; and
- Transition from radical surgery to precisely guided, minimally invasive focal treatment (“male lumpectomy”), which ensures effective cancer control and can be performed in outpatient clinics with drastically reduced complications, discomfort and costs.
Landmark Accomplishments
- AdMeTech pioneered research support for every stage of high-precision, prostate dedicated 3 Tesla (3T) multi-parametric (mp) MRI, from concept development and early stages of testing at the University of Pennsylvania in 1998 to clinical validation at Harvard Medical School, University of California at San Francisco and Los Angeles, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and many other leading academic institutions (see Research Phase I – IV).
- By 2005, based on the emergence of prostate mpMRI as one of the most promising diagnostic tools for prostate cancer, we established the International Prostate MRI Working Group, which integrated expertise and resources of the top scientific laboratories in order to expedite the advancement of research, testing and clinical implementation, including:
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- Creation of standards in image creation, analysis and interpretation (PI-RADS) endorsed by the American College of Radiology and the European Society of Urogenital Radiology since 2011; and
- Designing a definitive multi-center clinical trial, assembling its research team and creating a formal partnership with the American College of Radiology Imaging Network (ACRIN), the NIH-funded clinical trial infrastructure.
- Leading retrospective, statistically powered phase II clinical trial and assembling a research team, including Harvard Medical School’s Brigham and Women’s, Massachusetts General and Boston Children’s Hospitals, as well as ACRIN’s Statistical Center at Brown University.
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- AdMeTech established the field of molecular imaging of prostate cancer since 2001 and supported pioneering studies in PET and optical imaging at Johns Hopkins, Harvard Medical School, Boston University and other leading academic institutions (see Phase II –III).
- AdMeTech has pioneered support and development of robotics for prostate cancer biopsy and treatment at Johns Hopkins University since 1998 (see Phase I).
