When Peter Travers was first working on his tumor-treating fields technology, he had one purpose – to extend the life of his wife, Laurie.
At the time, he didn’t think that the technology he and his volunteer team of engineers created to help his wife would one day be recognized as one of the top medical technologies in the world.
But it has.
In December, MedTech Outlook Magazine named Winter Springs-based LifeBridge 10000 – Travers’ company – one of the top 10 emerging global medical companies. In fact, they were so impressed with the company they made LifeBridge 10000 the cover story for the issue.
No other Florida company was included on the list.
“From the first day we started the company, we’ve had one purpose – to help extend the lives of cancer patients and give them a high quality of life during that extra time,” Travers says. “That’s still our mission today, and it’s very exciting to see a major medical magazine recognize our patented technology’s potential.”
Like LifeBridge, many of the cutting-edge companies named to this list are in preclinical or clinical trial activities and are not yet approved by the FDA or other regulatory bodies for use on humans yet. Travers expects that they will receive FDA approval to begin clinical trials at the end of 2022 and will be ready to start treating patients commercially as early as 2025-2026.
The company was recognized for having developed the next generation of a technology called Tumor Treating Fields (TTF). Current TTF technology is limited to single occurrence tumors or very small clusters of tumors and cannot effectively treat diffuse cancers.
LifeBridge 10000’s technology, dubbed Adaptive Tumor Treating Fields (ATTF), allows the benefits of TTF cancer therapy to be extended to patients with late-stage (diffuse metastatic) cancer.
One of the many reasons this breakthrough was named as a top 10 global medical technology lies in the fact that 90% of cancer patients die from metastatic spread, not from their original primary cancer.
So, while over 20,000 patients have been treated with current TTF technology in that last 10 years, LifeBridge’s Technology opens the therapy to a patient population over 20 times larger than what the current TTF systems can address.
Simply put, LifeBridge 10000 will be able to extend the lives of tens of thousands of patients who have run out of options by treating them with its ATTF technology.
TTF (and the company’s patented ATTF) work by passing tuned alternating electric fields through tumor cells to disrupt key internal processes when their cells divide. Under the influence of these fields, the resulting malformed daughter cells either die outright or are quickly identified and killed by the body’s own immune system.
This not only leads to tumor reduction and/or elimination, it does so without any of the serious side effects common with chemotherapy, radiation or immunotherapies. TTF patients do not get nauseous, loose their hair, experience fatigue or get dreaded “chemo brain.” The worse side effects with this therapy have been reported to be minor skin irritation.
Laurie Travers’ breast cancer was discovered in 1998 as stage 3, progressing to stage 4 within the first year. He was by her side as she experienced 12 reoccurrences, nine rounds of chemotherapy, four series of radiation treatments, and frequent thoracentesis to remove fluid from the pleura around her lung nine times, and participation in two clinical trials.
By 2012, Laurie had run out of options. At that time, Travers learned of TTF’s potentially game changing therapy, he reached out to the company pioneering and commercializing it. However, they told him it would be at least 10 years or more before their technology would be available to treat patients like Laurie.
Undeterred, Travers formed team of senior engineering talent from friends and family for research & development, design and production of new ways to use TTF.
Treatments using their home-made TTF system extended Laurie’s life an additional three years with improvement and stability of her cancer tumors consistently occurring only where Laurie used the team’s TTF device.
“However, when her cancer started to develop in diffuse locations, the current limitations of TTF technology became apparent. That was the beginning of the end for Laurie,” Travers says. “The technology available at the time could not attack tumors in multiple locations.”
Thinking there had to be a more flexible way to deliver TTF therapy that could adapt to diffuse tumors, Travers and his engineering team started developing a whole new approach to delivering TTF fields to multiple, diffuse locations in the body. Out of this effort, their patented ATTF technology was born.
Unfortunately, Laurie died before a working ATTF device could be completed, but her legacy lives on in their mission and the groundbreaking technology the company is working to bring to market.
“It’s pretty remarkable to see where we are today,” Travers says. “Our company is still in preclinical trials, but our team, our investors and our partners are committed to getting this to market as soon as possible.”
LifeBridge 10000, and its FDA approved manufacturers, currently have a team of twenty-two working to bring the technology to market and have been a part of the UCF Business Incubation program for over five years.
The company has recently been focused on raising additional capital to complete FDA requirements leading to a human clinical pilot trial. To date, the company has raised over $1.6 Million from investors across the country.
“We are looking for more like-minded investors who want to see commercial ATTF therapy being delivered to tens of thousands of patients who have run out of other alternatives,” Travers says.
The issue featuring LifeBridge 10000 cover story as a Top 10 Emerging MedTech company can be found HERE.
Longwood-based LifeBridge 10000 was founded in 2015 because of the experience of Peter Travers, the company’s CEO. His wife Laurie spent 18 years battling cancer, three years under therapy of his Tumor Treating Fields Device. Today, LifeBridge 10000 works to extend and improve the quality of life for patients with advanced stage cancer by providing a fourth treatment option with their Adaptive TTF technology, the LB10000. For more information, visit http://www.lifebridge10000.com/
