Global medical technology innovator Uptake Medical is launching a new registry to assess longer-term clinical results in severe emphysema patients who have been treated with the company’s InterVapor system. InterVapor allows interventional pulmonologists to access a patient’s lung via a standard bronchoscope, and then use heated water vapor to perform targeted lung volume reduction.

Doctors presenting at the 2015 European Respiratory Society (ERS) meeting reported InterVapor patients experienced statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in both lung function and quality of life metrics. This was according to six-month data from the STEP-UP clinical study, a randomized, controlled, multi-center, multi-national trial designed to assess the safety and effectiveness of InterVapor.

“Until InterVapor, severe emphysema was typically treated either by requiring patients to undergo highly invasive open surgical lobectomy, or applying foreign material into their lungs,” said King Nelson, Uptake’s President and CEO. “InterVapor offers a less-invasive, bronchoscopic approach that allows clinicians to limit treatment only to the discrete portions of a patient’s lung that have been targeted.”

Patients participating in the InterVapor Registry will be asked to return for periodic follow-up visits to assess their physical lung function and quality of life improvements. Hundreds of hospitals across Europe are expected to contribute cases to the new InterVapor Registry, as the technology recently received CE Mark approval and became commercially available in the region.

“The progressive nature of emphysema dictates that we perform ongoing patient monitoring and intervention,” said Dr. Prof. Felix Herth, interventional pulmonologist of the Thoraxklinik in Heidelberg, Germany. “InterVapor allows us to take a segmental approach to lung volume reduction, which is advantageous because we can perform subsequent procedures when warranted. It gives these patients therapeutic options not available in any other treatment modality.”

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, more than 23 million people in Europe suffer from emphysema, a debilitating and progressive condition that affects the respiratory system.1

About InterVapor and Uptake Medical

Uptake Medical is a privately held company focused on the treatment of lung cancer and emphysema without the risks of surgery and implants or the toxicity of radiation. InterVapor, Uptake’s proprietary targeted vapor ablation technology that received CE Mark approval in 2015, applies energy with heated water vapor via a standard bronchoscope to the lungs. In the 15-minute procedure, lung tissue ablation is performed on the most diseased lung segments. The healthier segments are preserved to provide lung function and quality of life improvements in emphysema patients and to provide potential future targets as the disease inevitably progresses.

The InterVapor platform is now being tested and validated as a possible treatment for lung cancer tumors in a first-in-human study of regional lung tumor ablation in patients with early stage lung cancer and lung metastases. The outside-in bronchoscopic approach eliminates the need for percutaneous access or the need to pierce the tumor in a 10-second ablation during a 15-minute procedure. Founded in 2005, Uptake Medical is located in Tustin, California.

1 http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/9789264183896-en/01/16/index.html?itemId=/content/chapter/9789264183896-19-en