By Brian E. Clark
WisBusiness.com
MADISON – TomoTherapy’s initial patents will expire in four years. But co-founder Rock Mackie says he doesn’t give a hoot.
“I’ll be happy when that happens,” said Mackie, a UW-Madison medical physics and oncology professor who company makes cutting-edge, image-guided cancer treatment machines that sell for $3.5 million a pop.
“If everyone is using our technology by then, that will be great for patients,” explained Mackie, whose company went public in May.
“Besides, we have brilliant researchers and we will have moved on to other therapies,” said Mackie, who spoke to more than 100 people today at a Wisconsin Innovation Network luncheon.
Mackie was introduced by Tom Still, Wisconsin Technology Council president, who called TomoTherapy one of the “best examples of a company springing out of UW-Madison, going public and doing a lot to improve the human condition.”
Mackie said his company – which started in 1994 on a lab benchtop – has now delivered 125 units. He said it has huge growth potential in what is a $2 billion market.
He predicted that the image-guided technology TomoTherapy uses will eventually dominate the radiation therapy field.
“The paradigm is shifting,” he said confidently. “And TomoTherapy has the best treatment for breast, lung, bone marrow and other types of cancers.”
Mackie said by using a scanner and a mini-supercomputer, his firm’s machines can direct radiation to tumors and generally avoid healthy tissue. That means more radiation can be directed at cancers.
The researcher said by taking frequent – sometimes daily – scans, doctors can adapt treatments as patients lose weight and their anatomies change.
Mackie said the space-age look of the TomoTherapy machine has helped sell the expensive devices.
“It’s not only better, but it looks different,” he said. “And that has helped in marketing the machines, which are now in countries all over the globe.”
Though Mackie has no doubt that his company’s machines are superior to the competition, he said studies in medical journals are beginning to support that belief.
With bone marrow transplant treatments, he said medical researchers have documented that using by using TomoTherapy technology, they can avoid damaging the brain and gut because “ the computer figures out where the beams should go,” improving survival rates.
Eventually, he said, all centers that do bone marrow transplants will be “forced” to use TomoTherapy machines to compete.
Mackie heaped praise on UW-Madison colleagues, WARF, investors and others who backed his company long before it was a success story. Ironically, he said the first two machines were sold to hospitals in Canada, which jokingly he dubbed “that Mecca of socialized medicine.”
In its Initial Public Offering, TomoTherapy raised $185 million. And in the second quarter of this year, it had a backlog of machines worth $207 million.
He said growth has been somewhat limited by the use of the machines for only the most difficult cases. But he said a new regimen, called “scan, plan and treat” can be used for more common cancers. It also allows doctors to begin treatment almost immediately and relieve pain in painful tumors that affect nerves.
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