Diagnosing The World's Biggest Killer

TopSpin Medical, an Israeli start-up, is an emerging growth company with a local Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) device for detecting heart disease.

Source: Globes Online

Coronary heart disease is the number one killer in the western world. According to the American Heart Association, more than 7 million TopSpin Medical, is currently completing the development of a novel diagnostic tool that will image vulnerable plaque more clearly than any other existing technique. They have engineered the ability of performing local magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) with a miniature hand-held scanner.

The inventor of the medical breakthrough is Erez Golan, a physicist who served as a cardiovascular imaging group leader at Medinol. The TopSpin technology is protected by 15 patents.

Initial clinical trials are proving the efficacy of the system. IHTIR met with Eyal Kolka, the company's chief financial officer at the headquarters located in Lod, half an hour's drive from of Tel-Aviv. "We expect to enter the market either at the end of 2006 or at the outset of 2007", Kalka noted.

The company's activities are being financed from previous fund raising. $20 million was raised initially from private investors and several of Israel's venture capital companies. "Johnson & Johnson, has expressed its faith in us by investing in three separate rounds of investment," Kalka pointed out.

The company has an additional product in the pipeline. Its prostate MRI is an office-based system with a hand-held MRI probe that provides high imaging resolution of prostate cancer. The market is substantial with 1.5 million procedures carried out annually in the US.