Start-Up News November 2007

Imagine that the GPS (global positioning system) in your car was required to take you to a destination, but that the destination kept changing, mid-course. That, says Michael Goldstein, president & CEO of Actuality Medical Inc. is the challenge that faces surgeons and radiation oncologists treating cancers of soft tissues like the prostate or the breast. Speaking at the In3 meeting in Boston in October 2007, Goldstein explained that tissue moves in the interval between pretreatment planning sessions and an actual procedure, and it also deforms and moves during the procedure. A solution to this problem, common to many types of cancers, was the basis for the successful initial public offering of TomoTherapy Inc., which raised $187 million in May 2007. [See Deal] on the strength of its image-guided radiation platform for increasing the precision of external beam radiation. Now, Actuality Medical aims to bring the same kind of precision and control to minimally invasive procedures, beginning with brachytherapy for prostate cancer. ( See Exhibit 1.)

For some 240,000 diagnosed prostate cancer patients, the decision about the initial treatment rests as much on adverse events as...