AVO.L Regulatory News (AVO)

ADVANCED ONCOTHERAPY PLC

("Advanced Oncotherapy" or the "Company")

AGM Statement & Technological update

Advanced Oncotherapy (AIM: AVO), the developer of next-generation proton therapy systems for cancer treatment, will hold its Annual General Meeting at 2pm today at The Royal Society of Medicine, 1 Wimpole Street, London W1G 0AE. 

Ahead of the meeting, the Company provides an update on the technological development of its LIGHT system. The LIGHT system includes innovative linear accelerators which are integrated with a fully functional treatment room system and operated through a suite of software components. The following table summarises the current manufacturing and delivery status and a guideline for upcoming milestones.

Note: RFQ: Radio Frequency Quadrupole; SCDTL: Side-Coupled Drift Tube Linac; CCL: Coupled-Cavity Linac

Core linear accelerator technology

The core technology used in the LIGHT system, the innovative linear accelerator, offers several advantages over traditional circular proton beam technology. These include greater accuracy and quality of the proton beam, increased versatility, significantly lower shielding requirements and enhanced affordability.

Progress at the company's UK testing and assembly site at the Accelerator and Technology Centre in Daresbury is in-line with management's expectations. The tuning process of the existing modules and LIGHT system components that are in place on site is ongoing. The Company expects that by the end of 2019 all of the accelerating structures and hardware required for the treatment room will be delivered to the Daresbury site. In parallel, at the Company's Geneva testing site, the Company continues to make progress on improving the performance reliability of the LIGHT system.

Treatment room system

The hardware related to the treatment room is comprised of the Patient Positioning System ("PPS") and the scanning nozzle (also known as the dose delivery system). The purpose of the PPS is to provide a platform to position and immobilise the patient with respect to the radiation beam axis. It includes the Diagnostic Quality CT scanner used to scan patients in a seated position, the real-time X-ray verification system which enables continuous imaging of moving tumour, and the robotic chair which can move and rotate the patient with high accuracy and precision.

The PPS is now complete and undergoing factory Quality Assurance verification. Advanced Oncotherapy and its partner P-Cure have begun Factory Acceptance Testing before the PPS is shipped to Daresbury and then integrated with the LIGHT system. The nozzle is a device designed to control the direction of the proton beam at the exit of the proton accelerator and testing for this device remains on track.

Integrated software suite

The unique features of the LIGHT accelerator and patient positioning are fully supported by the software components which are designed to ensure optimal operational and enhanced clinical performance.

As part of the integration between the LIGHT accelerator and the treatment room hardware the Company is developing a treatment session manager ("TSM") software with its partner, Raysearch, to manage the daily proton treatment for patient delivery. This tool acts as the control system to connect and manage various sub-systems of the LIGHT system. The TSM has been successfully used to establish the initial integration with the related patient positioning components of LIGHT.

The software suite for LIGHT also includes a treatment planning software ("TPS"), which is used by clinicians to prepare the proton therapy treatment for each patient. Based on the TPS, tumours are modelised in three-dimensional space with each voxel representing the smallest 3D volume in which proton dose can be calculated. The TPS has been improved and can now provide 0.3 mm calculation voxels. This is particularly relevant for delivering a more targeted and conformal treatment: the LIGHT system is designed to produce higher quality proton mini-beams (beams less than 1 mm in size), thus requiring very small voxels for accurate treatment modelling and calculation. Also, the TPS offers the ability to plan patient treatments in the seated position (as opposed to a lying position). This provides an essential tool to identify those patients who will benefit the most from the unique properties of the LIGHT system in comparison to conventional x-ray therapy.

Nicolas Serandour, CEO of Advanced Oncotherapy, commented: "With the initial hardware manufacturing process and technical design now validated, we remain committed to completing the verification and validation needed to ensure first patient treatment by the end of 2020. It is essential that this verification work is completed to the highest specifications to ensure a smooth journey towards regulatory clearance and wider commercial launch of the LIGHT system around the world."

About Advanced Oncotherapy Plc www.avoplc.com

Advanced Oncotherapy is a provider of particle therapy in the treatment of cancer, which harnesses the very best in modern technology. Advanced Oncotherapy's R&D team, ADAM, in Geneva, focuses on the development of a proprietary proton accelerator - LIGHT (Linac Image Guided Hadron Technology). LIGHT accelerates protons to the energy levels achieved in legacy machines but in a compact and truly modular unit, offering significant cost advantages. LIGHT also delivers proton beams in a way that facilitates greater precision and electronic control, which are not achievable with currently available alternative technologies.

Advanced Oncotherapy will offer healthcare providers affordable systems that will enable them to treat cancer with an innovative technology, offering better health outcomes and lower treatment related side effects.

Advanced Oncotherapy continually monitors the market for any emerging improvements in delivering proton or particle therapy and actively seeks working relationships with providers of these innovative technologies. Through these relationships, the Company will remain the prime provider of cutting edge, cost-effective systems for particle therapy. 

Due to the high cost of building and operating traditional proton therapy technologies has meant that the global capacity to treat cancer patients in this way has been extremely low. Only 1% of patients eligible for radiotherapy are being treated with proton therapy currently, with a capacity for as little as 60,000 patients to be treated annually across the globe. Considering the UK alone, where roughly 360,000 patients are diagnosed with cancer each year, it is clear that there is a desperate clinical need for the roll-out of a technology that can bring the benefits of proton beam therapy to millions of patients worldwide.