Acoustic Neuroma

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Viseon Inc. announces the company’s first use of the MaxView® 4K Advanced Digital Visualization (4K-ADV™) system during a neurosurgical tumor resection procedure. The procedure was performed by neurosurgeon Dr. Farrokh Farrokhi, Virginia Mason Medical Center, Seattle, Washington, who specializes in deep brain stimulation, skull base surgery, brain tumors and minimally invasive spine surgery. Dr. Farrokhi commented: “As a regular user of the Viseon HD technology for a variety of minimally invasive spine surgery procedures for more than a year, transition to neurosurgical use will be seamless, especially with the superior image quality and depth perception now enabled by the new 4K-ADV MaxView System. Admittedly, I chose a high hurdle for this first 4K-ADV case in a Vestibular Schwannoma tumor resection. This technology use should be routine for Glioma or Metastatic tumor procedures and I will be using it for these procedures in the future.” Pete Davis, Viseon President & COO, added, “We are honored to have Dr. Farrokhi usher Viseon into the next chapter of our journey, expanding our addressable market from Minimally Invasive Spine Surgery into Cranial Neurosurgery. His feedback from the first case was very helpful as we plan to expand our sales emphasis in 2024. The MaxView 4K-ADV System continues to expand the innovative enabling nature of the Viseon digital technology, disrupting legacy standards of large, expensive capital equipment. We plan to continue to innovate, participate and collaborate in the future of digital health.” About Viseon: Viseon Inc. is privately owned with a founding goal to advance open and minimally invasive surgery with innovative technology that enhances intraoperative visualization with state of the art, single use 4K imaging technology. The Company has remained focused on no capital equipment, no OR footprint, no equipment redundancy, no sterile tray processing, and ease of use with broad procedural diversity, enabling use in-hospital and in the ASC setting. By disrupting antiquated modalities for visualization, the Company is enabling the digital future, accelerating adoption of advanced surgical techniques, improving the surgeon experience, patient outcomes and safety, and introducing economic benefits to hospitals and surgery centers. View source version on businesswire.com: Contacts Viseon, Inc. Customer Service customerservice@viseon-inc.com Source: Viseon Inc. View this news release online at:

Hosted by the Children's Tumor Foundation, NF Summit and NF Conference are the largest gathering of the NF community in the world NEW YORK, June 22, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- From June 21 through June 27, the largest gathering of NF researchers, clinicians, and patients in the world will take place at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Scottsdale, Arizona. NF is a group of genetic disorders that causes tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body, and affects 1 in 2,000 births of all populations equally. As such, NF affects millions worldwide, but is underrecognized. While there is one approved treatment for a small subgroup of NF patients with plexiform neurofibromas, there is no cure yet, and the vast majority of NF patients face serious health issues because of the condition. This gathering in Arizona, comprising two meetings, offers novel insights into NF research, generates enthusiasm that effective therapeutics are on the horizon, and fosters a deeper sense of community. - NF Summit: patients, families, and caregivers will convene for three and a half days (June 21-24) to hear about promising research, meet with world-class NF experts, and participate in patient empowerment sessions. All forms of NF will be covered – neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) and all forms of schwannomatosis (SWN), including NF2-related schwannomatosis (NF2), as well as quality of life issues for the myriad manifestations of NF, which can cause deafness, blindness, bone abnormalities, learning disabilities, disabling pain, and cancer. Notable sessions at the NF Summit include: Clinical trials in nutraceuticals that are leading to less toxic treatment and prevention strategies through a specific dietary component. Panel discussion on alternative & traditional approaches to chronic pain Seminar for parents and other caregivers about navigating chronic illness; this session will explore the emotional and psychological impact of NF on parents, siblings, and other family members, as well as the practical challenges that arise when a family member has a chronic illness. The NF Clinical Trials Consortium session will review the structure, discuss trials completed or ongoing, and plans for the future of the Department of Defense-funded program. - NF Conference: this four-day global meeting (June 24-27) attracts leading specialists from across a wide range of scientific disciplines and research and clinical backgrounds, all focused on improving outcomes for NF patients. This annual event is the most important date on the NF research calendar, and is critical to consensus building and advancing basic, translational, and clinical research in NF and related fields. Among the key advances to be presented at the NF Conference are: dedicated afternoon to gene therapy in NF with a targeted focus on developing curative therapies that address the underlying genetic abnormalities in NF patients focus on pain, from basic science to preclinical and translational testing & development to novel imaging biomarkers to clinical management a full day of programming dedicated to all types of schwannomatosis, which includes NF2-related schwannomatosis (NF2), covering alternative cell models, new therapeutic approaches, and microenvironment of nerve tumors and the role of neurons in tumor growth For more information about NF and the Children's Tumor Foundation, visit . For more information about the NF Summit, visit . For more information about the NF Conference, visit . ABOUT THE CHILDREN'S TUMOR FOUNDATION: The Children's Tumor Foundation is the world's leading nonprofit dedicated to funding and driving innovative research that will result in effective treatments for the millions of people worldwide living with NF, a group of genetic conditions that causes tumors to grow on nerves throughout the body. One in every 2,000 people is born with some type of neurofibromatosis or schwannomatosis, which may lead to blindness, deafness, bone abnormalities, disfigurement, learning disabilities, disabling pain, or cancer. NF affects all populations equally, and while there is no cure yet, the Children's Tumor Foundation mission of driving research, expanding knowledge, and advancing care for the NF community fosters our vision of one day ending NF. For more information, please visit: ctf.org. SOURCE Children's Tumor Foundation

Recursion Pharmaceuticals has agreed to acquire two biotechnology startups developing artificial intelligence tools for drug discovery for a combined $87.5 million, the company said Monday.The Salt Lake City company will pay $40 million for Cyclica and $47.5 million for Valence, and expects to add roughly 60 employees to its payroll.We are moving programs forward, but it's not at the pace that is possible with the right tools, said Chris Gibson, Recursions CEO and co-founder. We felt like if we built it ourselves, it was going to be two or three years slower than if we found the best teams in the world and brought them in-house.Recursion takes an approach to industrial drug discovery that Gibson describes as full stack, borrowing language more common to the technology sector than to biotech. In tech circles, full stack developers work on both the front-end the parts that users see and the back-end, or the systems that make a website or app functional.Cyclica and Valence are meant to help Recursion offer a more complete range of drug discovery services. According to Gibson, Recursion started with a list of more than 100 potential acquisition targets and, over the past 18 months, winnowed that down to Cyclica and Valence.Cyclica, based in Toronto, has two products that enable it to better predict and generate hits on drug targets in the development of small molecule medicines. Valence, based in Montreal, focuses on a machine learning technique known as few-shot learning classifying data with a limited number of samples.Valence is advised by Yoshua Bengio, a noted Canadian computer scientist who also serves as a scientific adviser for Recursion.In addition to partnering with other companies, Recursion has several drug candidates of its own in clinical testing for rare cancers and other conditions including neurofibromatosis type 2, an inherited disorder where benign tumors grow along nerves. It has more than a dozen programs in discovery stages for cancers, brain disorders, inflammation and other rare diseases.We wanted to de-bottleneck the downstream efforts and accelerate our ability to turn biology and early chemistry insights into real molecules that we will be able to, hopefully, test in humans, Gibson said.AI-enabled drug discovery is a hot area in biotech, despite some skepticism from industry veterans about how large its impact might really be. Companies like Exscientia, BenevolentAI and Insitro are working to build new models of drug discovery that draw on fields like computational biology and machine learning. Other biotechs, such as Relay Therapeutics, have put machine learning at the heart of their drug development work.Recursion is among the most well-funded companies in that group. It raised more than $400 million privately before adding another $436 million in an initial public offering two years ago, one of the largest new stock offerings for a biotech since 2018. The company had $473 million in cash and equivalents at the end of March.Shares of Recursion rose by as much as 10% through early Monday afternoon on news of its acquisitions and earnings. Still, at about $5.50 apiece, those shares have lost more than two thirds of their value since Recursion's Nasdaq debut in 2021. '