The company is not involved with the PET machinery, but instead provides the much-needed imaging agents necessary for PET imaging. These agents are designed to improve patient diagnoses and management by evaluating various forms of cardiac disease at the cellular and molecular level.
Each year in the U.S., millions of patients undergo molecular imaging studies to detect and evaluate various forms of coronary artery disease (CAD). These images are helpful to doctors who treat coronary artery disease and, in particular, help doctors diagnose patients with suspected CAD.
This is a very large market. In the United States, there are an estimated 12 million PET imaging procedures done per year. However, the vast majority of these scans are for the diagnosis of cancer. Doctors have traditionally opted for cheaper options such as MRI or CT scans with cardiac patients.
However, that is changing and there is large potential for FluoroPharma as PET scanning becomes more established in the cardiac sector. This market seems to be quickly shifting in favor of increased usage of PET scans for cardiac patients.
FluoroPharma expects to capitalize on this rapidly growing opportunity in this sector. It will do so through the introduction of its novel imaging agents into a market which is forecast to grow by at least 14% annually over the next five years to nearly a $1 billion market for cardiac patients alone.
The company’s focus at the moment is on four separate cardiac molecular imaging agents, two of which are in clinical stage development and are about to enter Phase II clinical trials. The third pharmaceutical candidate is in an early development stage with clinical testing likely to be several years away and the fourth is still in the discovery phase.
The two most-advanced candidates are: CardioPET, which allows assessment of coronary artery disease while patients are at rest; and BFPET, which is a novel cardiovascular blood flow imaging agent that concentrates in healthy myocardial cells and enables improved detection of CAD in cases of multi-vessel disease.
The third candidate is VasoPET, the only PET agent known to selectively target inflamed atheromatous plaque, making it easy for doctors to identify coronary artery plaque. The final candidate – AZPET – includes an approach for directly imaging plague and the compensatory receptor systems in the elderly to help track the progress of treatment of patients with Alzheimer’s disease.
The goal of the company’s cardiac products is to improve overall patient care in several ways. The products are expected to provide significantly greater diagnostic accuracy compared to current methods, thereby reducing the number of unnecessary diagnostic and therapeutic procedures.
The good news for FluoroPharma is that with the exception of one currently marketed branded cardiac PET tracer, which suffers from some well-known problems, the market for such tracers is basically wide open for the company.
Being one of the main players in a soon-to-be billion dollar market makes FluoroPharma Medical a truly exciting long-term investment opportunity.
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