Sean Taffler presents Acoustiic at LSI USA '24

Sean Taffler  0:06  
Good morning. My name is Sean Taffler, CSO and co founder of Acoustiic and I'd like to introduce you to the future of focused ultrasound therapy. We're an energy delivery device platform base that delivers sufficient energy for mechanical disruption of tissue, for thermal necrosis of tissue, but also for neuromodulation. The initial market is cancer, as we know. The current therapy, therapies at the moment, are not without their own complications. We cut burn poison. There is a future without that. We can use focused ultrasound to deliver energy safely and efficiently to target points within the body. But why now? Well, it's been a culmination of many technologies and many different industries coming together to get to this critical Nexus. And what we're seeing is the development in other areas is flowing over into the ultrasound space. We see an uptick in a number of publications year on year. We see even see 60 minutes doing a segment, or 60 minutes on it for neuromodulation, for treatment of depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. Proved indications are increasing globally. 32 approved indications. 17 countries are offering reimbursement on some of those with reimbursement following for other indications shortly, 63% of the indications cleared in the US have clear, have reimbursement already. Looking at the number of treatments being done, about 100,000 treatments were done in the US in 2022 which is more than the cumulative sum. Prior to that, we have a 25% growth year on year in number of treatments in the US alone. And we're looking at in industry investment of $350 million $3 billion has been estimated, estimated to be invested in the space in the last 20 years, but 1/3 of that has been invested in the last three years. We're seeing an uptick in investment. Is obviously a reason for that. Number of patents are rapidly increasing. The space is still somewhat wide open. So there is freedom to operate and freedom to move and produce interesting and novel companies. So what do we envisage? We envisage the patient going into the MR bore with our applicator on the table. They go into the bore. The MRI is used for both structural imaging to diagnose and then we can treat the patient at the same time, seeing the ultrasound applicator in Mr space enables us to coordinate the 3d spaces deliver energy acutely and appropriately to the target tumor and destroy that tumor, all the while, using the MR as a feedback loop to monitor thermal, dose and accuracy of treatment. Finally, the MR can be used to verify treatment at the end of that whilst we're generating that, whilst generating those therapy sessions, we're also collecting data. That data then goes on to form the next iteration of our system, which is in development at the moment, where we image as well as deliver energy to the tissue. So now we collect gold truth, ground truth data with EMR, with ultrasound imaging, collected at the same time, again, delivering therapy under Mr control and guidance, but also collecting a golden data set of ultrasound data that enables us to develop an AI system that eventually leads to the ability to treat outside of the Mr. So we eventually drop the MR from the equation. This helps push the technology out of the MR suite, removing the burden of the hospital and democratizes and allows easier access to therapy. How do we do that? We've taken what typically is independent units that necessarily increase the bulk and size of the system, and we've collapsed that down to a small integrated module, if you will. This is the evolution of the television set, the TV, from a cathode ray tube to a 4k HD TV. They both show images, but they use profoundly different technologies to do that, and the differences are not achievable with the old technology. If you were to try and build a system this big, 1152 element transducer array that fits in the size of your hand, you would have an equipment cabinet the size of two wardrobes and weighing 1000s of pounds sitting by your side, along with a huge umbilous that drags across the floor, allowing the tight integration of the electronics means that we are more efficient electrically, so that come everything gets smaller. So that's how we get something small. But why do we need so many elements? This is a building block for our system. The module 1152 elements is combined together with other modules to build larger applicators. In our clinical indication, we have 16 of these model. Modules together nearly 20,000 elements. Why do we need so many of those comes down to physics. On the left you see here a simulation of our steering electronically, and this is the versatility of what we call the phased array. So the individual elements under individual independent control allow us to direct and control the location of the energy in the tissue. So looking at these two images on the left, we're either focusing straight ahead or to the right of the array. If we try and do the same thing with we model some some typical geometries from other transducers in the market. You see the performance is poor in the middle one, and somewhat less than satisfactory in the one on the right. And this is due to physical effects, and what that manifests as is unwanted energy delivered to unneeded areas of the body. In effect, you can't control where your energy is being deposited into the tissue, or you can't assure that it is safe. This is the versatility of the phased array. These power levels are appropriate for ablation, but it scales linearly with power from mechanical disruption to neuromodulation, the same physical effects apply. So what about the market? We see the market growing to nearly a billion dollars in 2028 I think that's our underestimate. There are enough companies entering the market now that it's going to be bigger, non invasive, faster turnaround at hospitals. These things are going to drive adoption quicker than you can. You can blink. As I said, 32 approved indications globally. You know, eight approved in the US five have got clearance and 1000 100,000 treatments in the US alone, and the market is booming. We're launching our first investigational device towards the end of the year. It has a collection of four of the modules that we saw earlier. This is aimed to seed the device to researchers and develop the program globally and allow the researchers the flexibility and control of ultrasounds that they need to implement their ideas. We're opened our Series A and the use of funds largely goes towards actually the software and the UI. We're more like a software company than a hardware company, having retired the risk the modules that we shown earlier, we're producing now, and they can be collected together to form larger applicators of different shapes and different sizes. So the technical risk has largely been minimized on the on the hardware side, mostly the harder side of it, and now we've approached the software side, the soft kind of user interface. How will surgeons use this reimagined ability to deliver energy to the body, and that is it. Thank you. I.