CytoVeris Awarded National Cancer Institute Small Business Innovation Research Phase 1 Grant

Grant will be used to validate company’s AI-powered technology for improving treatment options and outcomes for patients diagnosed with bladder cancer

Farmington, CT – CytoVeris Inc., a medical device company developing intraoperative visualization technologies to improve surgical decision making, today announced that the company has been awarded a National Cancer Institute Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH) to establish the feasibility of its AI-powered UV-autofluorescence technology in patients with bladder cancer.

Over 74,000 people in the U.S. are diagnosed with bladder cancer each year. More than 87% of those patients are treated with transurethral resection of bladder tumor (TURBT) procedures to remove the cancer. This innovative application of AI-powered imaging improves the quality of TURBT procedures by ensuring complete excision of cancerous tissue, enabling surgeons to visualize various tissue types intraoperatively and confirm they have reached the muscular tissue in the bladder, which is essential for adequate staging of the disease.

“Our innovative platform technology combines artificial intelligence with advanced imaging and has the unique flexibility to be applied to multiple disease areas,” said Dr. Alan Kersey, CEO and Founder of CytoVeris. “We are incredibly excited to have been awarded this grant and about our ongoing partnership with Hartford Hospital. TURBT procedures are one of many procedures where our technology can potentially be applied to improve clinical outcomes and quality of life for patients treated with surgery following a cancer diagnosis.”

The $400,000 Phase 1 grant will be used to validate the application of CytoVeris’ technology and demonstrate its safety in a clinical study, to be conducted in collaboration with Hartford Hospital. The proposal was regarded as highly innovative, demonstrating the potential of the technology to directly improve the lives of patients following a bladder cancer diagnosis and potentially decrease the likelihood that patients would need to undergo multiple TURBT procedures.

“The NCI SBIR program is highly competitive,” said Patrick Curry, COO of CytoVeris.

“The selection of our project for funding by NIH speaks to the clinical need and potential of our technology in this important application, as well as to the strength of our team working in collaboration with Hartford HealthCare.”

“The technology CytoVeris is developing may prove to help surgeons remove bladder tumors with greater precision, accuracy, and confidence that the cancerous tissue was removed the first time,” said Dr. Anoop Meraney, Director of Urologic Oncology at Hartford HealthCare and co-investigator for the research trial. “We are enthusiastic about collaborating with CytoVeris and are looking forward to continuing to explore this technology in subsequent clinical studies.”

Peter Yu, Physician-in-Chief of Hartford HealthCare Cancer Institute said, “We are very excited to become a part of the clinical validation of the proposed device. I am delighted to see the enthusiasm and engagement of my colleagues, Drs. Anoop Meraney and Margaret Assaad, who are co-investigators of this study. We look forward to working with CytoVeris to develop this innovative technology and bring a product to market that meets a significant unmet clinical need in oncology.”

This research is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number 1R43CA265673. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Read more at: https://reporter.nih.gov