More than half of all cancer patients worldwide receive radiation therapy—also called radiotherapy, x-ray, or irradiation—to treat their disease.  According to the American Cancer Society (ACS), there were 12 million new cases of cancer worldwide in 2007.  By 2050, ACS estimates there will be 27 million new cases worldwide on an annual basis. Radiation therapy is typically used to kill cancer cells and shrink tumors. Radiation therapy injures or destroys cells in the area being treated by damaging their genetic material, making it impossible for these cells to continue to grow and divide. The goal of radiation therapy is to damage as many cancer cells as possible, while limiting harm to nearby healthy tissue. Radiation therapy may be used alone or in combination with other cancer treatments, such as chemotherapy or surgery. Radiation therapy may be used to treat almost every type of solid tumor.  In these episodes, we’ll speak with leading industry experts and Nanobiotix executives about how the Company is using technology that it calls “nanoXray” to resolve radiation therapy’s biggest drawback: destruction of healthy tissue and its subsequent deleterious side effects when a high dose of x-ray is necessary.  The Company believes that nanoXray offers the potential for a dramatic innovation in cancer therapy, based on a technology that is designed to allow destruction of cancer cells only—a new treatment weapon that could be used alone, or in concert with existing anticancer protocols: chemotherapy, surgery, and immunotherapy.  Because nanoXray does not interact with healthy cells, it is expected to prevent the toxic side effects associated with chemotherapy.

Christophe Douat, a former strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and now a Partner with Paris-based VC firm Matignon Technologies, is an investor in Nanobiotix.

This podcast is one in a series called: Nanonmedicine & Targeted Cancer Therapies, which can be found at www.medtechmatters.com