ARTICLE SUMMARY:
GT Medical Technologies’ implant delivers radiation therapy directly to the bed of an excised brain tumor—a potential game-changer for people with highly proliferative, hard-to-treat tumors such as glioblastomas. Its GammaTile Therapy is now in use at 75 US hospitals and the firm has raised $26 million over the past three years—not bad for a company that launched its flagship product at the height of the pandemic.
GT Medical Technologies CEO Matthew Likens is counting his blessings. In March 2020, his company had just initiated a full US launch of GammaTile Therapy, a potentially game-changing implantable radiation therapy for patients with brain tumors, when the pandemic hit in full force, limiting the sales team’s access to clinicians and facilities at a key juncture. Yet despite the inopportune timing, the young company managed to successfully navigate the challenges of the past two-and-a-half years and is thriving today.
GammaTile Therapy is now in use at 75 US hospitals and has been employed in over 700 patient procedures, according to Likens, who says the business is “growing quite rapidly: we’re expanding our sales force and adding a couple more centers every month on a regular basis. We feel fortunate not only to have persevered through COVID, but to have established ourselves so broadly at this point.”
And, given the size of this market and the unmet need, he is optimistic about future growth as well. “There are about 600 hospitals in the US that do these types of procedures,” he notes, representing a total addressable market estimated at $4 billion annually and 100,000 patients per year, “so in many ways, we feel like we’re just getting started.”
