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Raanes on Rollout of Cancer Treatment (Audio) · Bloomberg Intelligence

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  Speaker 1: This is taking stock with Pim Box and Kathleen Hayes
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  Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio, fighting cancer by revolutionizing radiation therapy. I
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  Speaker 1: want to get right to our next guest. Chris Ronis
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  Speaker 1: is chief executive officer at view Ray. His Meridian system
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  Speaker 1: can not only image but treat cancer patients simultaneously. It
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  Speaker 1: can reduce the wear and tear of much needed radiation
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  Speaker 1: on the patients and by targeting individual cancer tumors much
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  Speaker 1: more accurately, perhaps save lives that wouldn't be saved otherwise.
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  Speaker 1: Chris Ronnis, welcome to the show. Glad to be here.
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  Speaker 1: Thank you. So tell us about view Ray, tell us
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  Speaker 1: about what you're doing. So view Ray is all about
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  Speaker 1: taking the fight on cancer to the next level. As
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  Speaker 1: you said, it's a visualizing cancer being able to target
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  Speaker 1: it more accurately, and we do that by combining radiation
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  Speaker 1: therapy with a real time m RI. I not the
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  Speaker 1: kind of m R I the you sit in for
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  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes and you get a single picture, But you
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  Speaker 1: can lay down on this machine and you immediately start
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  Speaker 1: getting a video. You can watch everything moving around in
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  Speaker 1: the body and you can see that you're hitting the
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  Speaker 1: tumor that you want to hit and maybe even as
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  Speaker 1: importantly you're missing the things you want to miss, because
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  Speaker 1: radiation is all about being able to get the cancer
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  Speaker 1: and miss everything healthy around it. Tell us about the
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  Speaker 1: efforts of the company to make money and to get
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  Speaker 1: the product out into the marketplace. Yeah, so we've we're
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  Speaker 1: a startup ten years old, but we graduated to public
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  Speaker 1: status last year. Uplisted to the NASDAC in March, and
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  Speaker 1: we are now pivoting the whole business to the next
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  Speaker 1: generation product. We've got a linear accelerator version of this product.
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  Speaker 1: We announced that early this year. We're gonna do our
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  Speaker 1: clearances with the f D, A ce mark for Europe, etcetera.
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  Speaker 1: In the second half of this year, and that product
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  Speaker 1: has really got people very, very excited for for a
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  Speaker 1: lot of reasons. Well, Chris, So, I'm sure investors are
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  Speaker 1: your wedding around the type of what what is different?
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  Speaker 1: What are you doing that's different and new compared to
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  Speaker 1: what anybody else who's in this field is doing. What
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  Speaker 1: makes you special? Why should I invest in this? Well
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  Speaker 1: viewer really is the first time that doctors can see
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  Speaker 1: what they're doing at the time they're delivering radiation. Today
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  Speaker 1: radiation treatment is done blind. You do a lot of
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  Speaker 1: planning beforehand, but at the time the patient is lying
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  Speaker 1: on the table, it's like having a blindfold on. And
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  Speaker 1: we take the blindfold off. We give the radiation oncologist
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  Speaker 1: the ability to see what's going on in real time.
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  Speaker 1: So here she can make some real time decisions. Now
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  Speaker 1: I know you just completed a private placement, correct, we did.
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  Speaker 1: We just we raised thirteen point seven five million, and
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  Speaker 1: you're going to use that money for Again. That's all
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  Speaker 1: about this pivot over to the LINAK business. It's the
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  Speaker 1: next generation product. It's the product that the industry has
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  Speaker 1: been waiting for. How much did they cost? You know,
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  Speaker 1: it's like any piece of radiation therapy equipment. It's in
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  Speaker 1: the millions of dollars and we're at a premium to
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  Speaker 1: the rest of the market because of what we can do.
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  Speaker 1: But these machines treat hundreds of patients a year, they
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  Speaker 1: last for ten years. Radiation therapy still a very cost
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  Speaker 1: effective way to treat cancer. Now you have an M
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  Speaker 1: S E from M I T. So you started out
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  Speaker 1: on the more the scientific and engineering side. The technology
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  Speaker 1: here is so important. What was the discovery? What made
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  Speaker 1: this possible. Is it something about not technology? What was
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  Speaker 1: the key here to make this breakthrough? So it turns
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  Speaker 1: out that m RI I and radiation just don't like
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  Speaker 1: each other, and that sort of a colloquial way to
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  Speaker 1: talk about science. But MRI machines need absolute quiet in
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  Speaker 1: order to be able to listen to a little sub
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  Speaker 1: atomic spins and make their images, and radiation sources tend
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  Speaker 1: to be really really noisy. MRI machines need strong magnets,
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  Speaker 1: that's what the M stands for in order to work,
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  Speaker 1: and strong magnets distort radiation. And it's figuring out how
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  Speaker 1: to solve those two problems that we have and that
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  Speaker 1: no one else has. Do you have any data, any
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  Speaker 1: any of you, any of your trials in the field
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  Speaker 1: that you can give us an example of how successful
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  Speaker 1: this has been relative to PASS treatments. Yeah, so we
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  Speaker 1: have some really exciting data. Actually the first data got
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  Speaker 1: published at the end of last year. We have these
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  Speaker 1: big annual meetings. But let me give you an example.
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  Speaker 1: One of the one of the trials that's ongoing is
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  Speaker 1: a breast study. So typically post surgery doctor will go
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  Speaker 1: in and remove the cancer. Is the lump ectomy post surgery,
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  Speaker 1: a woman will go in for six to eight weeks
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  Speaker 1: of radiation every day. With the accuracy of this system
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  Speaker 1: being able to see it exactly and being able to
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  Speaker 1: cone down the beam so you're only radiating the tumor bed,
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  Speaker 1: not the whole breast. They're able to reduce that down
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  Speaker 1: to five days. So six weeks down to five days.
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  Speaker 1: And the really exciting result is that one of the
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  Speaker 1: patients in that study had good to excellent cosmesis. In
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  Speaker 1: other words, the breast conservation surgery was successful and the
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  Speaker 1: radiation didn't do anything to detract from that. And that's
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  Speaker 1: very different from other people who tried to do it
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  Speaker 1: with the blindfold on, because when you do with the
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  Speaker 1: blindfold on, you burn things, you blister things, you dimple things.
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  Speaker 1: Hundred good to excellent cosmes is six week treatment down
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  Speaker 1: to one week. What do you say to the investors,
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  Speaker 1: Never mind the patients, but the investors who have been waiting,
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  Speaker 1: I guess patiently for the positive and positive news. Stock
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  Speaker 1: is down almost fifty so far this year, So this
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  Speaker 1: is all about pivoting to the linear accelerator business. We
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  Speaker 1: have over a hundred million dollars in backlog. These are
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  Speaker 1: signed orders that people have given us and those will
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  Speaker 1: start to roll out to the customers after this clearance period.
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  Speaker 1: So we are most of the way through this transition
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  Speaker 1: from the first gend to the second generation, and you know,
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  Speaker 1: going forward from here, those those new products are both
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  Speaker 1: as effective, if not more effective, and a lot better
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  Speaker 1: for the business in terms of gross marching. Thanks very
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  Speaker 1: much for joining us and explaining all this. Chris Ronnis.
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  Speaker 1: He is the chief executive officer of View Ray. They're
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  Speaker 1: based in Mountain View, California. This is Bloomberg