Thermosome, an IZB-based drug development company specializing in targeted tumor therapies, announced its participation in the IMAGIO consortium set out to develop innovations in interventional oncology focused on lung cancer, liver cancer and soft tissue sarcomas (STS). The IMAGIO consortium, consisting of approximately 30 clinics, academic institutes, healthcare companies, and patient organizations, has been awarded a EUR 24 million grant from the Innovative Health Initiative, complemented by additional funding from industry partners to conduct research on less invasive cancer treatments.
Thermosome will receive EUR 1.3 million of funding and will participate in the work package “Multimodal MR-HIFU (Magnet Resonance-High Intensity Focused Ultrasound) enabled therapy for sarcoma”, which will be carried out by a group of partners coordinated by Prof. Dr. Holger Grüll, Chair of Experimental Imaging and Image-Guided Therapy at the University Hospital of Cologne, Germany. Further participants in the work package are Profound Medical, Philips, Turku University Hospital, and Gremse IT.
As part of the work package, the University Hospital of Cologne will conduct an investigator-initiated trial (IIT) to demonstrate the feasibility of targeted doxorubicin administration to tumors in combination with the Sonalleve® MR-HIFU system (Profound Medical). The Sonalleve® MR-HIFU system consists of Profound’s high intensity focused ultrasound system integrated into a Philips magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) device and allows focal heating of tumor tissue to hyperthermic temperatures. The objectives of the trial in soft tissue sarcoma patients will be the evaluation of the novel hyperthermia feature with respect to safety and performance, and tumor targeting following THE001 treatment in combination with the MR-HIFU technology. The trial will be conducted in the second half of the 4-year program, following animal studies of THE001 in combination with MR-HIFU.
“We are delighted to be part of the IMAGIO consortium, and we look forward to expanding our collaboration with the University Hospital of Cologne,” said Dr. Pascal Schweizer, co-founder and CEO/CFO of Thermosome. “We have been working with Prof. Dr. Holger Grüll and his group since the inception of Thermosome, including a highly successful, joint predecessor program called temperature-sensitive liposomes – low-intensity focused ultrasound (TSL-LIFU) from 2016 to 2020 which was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). IMAGIO will build on this project and also consider the results of our ongoing Phase I trial of THE001, which was initiated earlier this year.”
“Based on more than a decade of experience with thermosensitive liposomes and MR-HIFU, I am convinced that Thermosome’s innovative tumor targeting technology is best-in-class,” said Prof. Dr. Holger Grüll. “It has always been the goal of my work to provide MR-HIFU-enabled hyperthermia for image-guided tumor targeting using temperature-sensitive liposomes. I strongly believe that this project will nicely integrate these components, paving the way for broader clinical use of this approach.”
