ARTICLE SUMMARY:
An update on a company bringing localized, immediate, and beam-free radiotherapy to brain cancer patients.
When tumors are removed from the brain, patients need adjuvant treatments such as radiation and chemotherapy to ensure the cancer is as eradicated as completely as possible, since surgeons cannot remove a margin of healthy tissue, as they would with other types of cancer, without compromising potentially critical brain function. These follow-up treatments have historically included oral chemo drugs, in particular temozolomide, external beam radiation therapy (EBRT), and brachytherapy, an implantable form of radiation that is commonly used in prostate cancer but is technically challenging to employ in the brain. Each of these methods has benefits and disadvantages, and more than one may be necessary to manage brain-originating tumors and metastases.
In the early 2010s, five individuals with medical backgrounds in radiation oncology and neurosurgery joined forces to develop GammaTile, a brachytherapy technology designed to deliver a precisely controlled dose of radiation to the tumor cavity directly after resection surgery with minimal impact on surrounding healthy tissue. Following a clinical trial that validated the efficacy and safety of GammaTile, the team officially formed GT Medical Technologies in 2017 and received a 510(k) clearance for recurrent brain tumors the following year, expanding the label in 2020 to any newly diagnosed brain tumor (except meningioma, though the recurrent variety is included).
