Corporate News

Polarean Imaging plc (AIM: POLX), the medical-imaging technology company, with a proprietary drug-device combination product for the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) market, notes the publication of a study using Polarean's hyperpolarised gas MRI technology in a study of patients with severe asthma in the April edition of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine (AJRCCM).

The study, entitled "Sputum Eosinophilia and Magnetic Resonance Imaging Ventilation Heterogeneity in Severe Asthma" is authored by Svenningsen, Eddy, Lim, Cox, Nair and Parraga and can be obtained from the AJRCCM website: https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/full/10.1164/rccm.201709-1948OC

The study looked at patients with severe asthma and investigated the contributions of both inflammatory and non-inflammatory components of airway disease. A key finding was that MRI scans using hyperpolarized gas were able to identify, for the first time, the airway inflammatory (eosinophilia) and non-inflammatory contributions (smooth muscle dysfunction) to ventilation heterogeneity in patients with severe asthma.

The findings of the study suggest that in patients with severe asthma, inhaled hyperpolarized gas MRI may help discriminate between the different components of severe asthma, enabling more precise and personalised treatment decisions.

Richard Hullihen, CEO of Polarean, commented: "I am delighted that Polarean's technology has been able to assist this clinical study, which shows how hyperpolarised gas, when used in MRI scans, can provide otherwise unobtainable information to clinicians in the treatment of respiratory conditions, such as severe asthma. It is worth noting that these findings were produced using an earlier version of our system built on the use of the noble gas Helium-3. Our current technology uses an improved noble gas, 129Xe, which has the added advantages of additionally providing for the measurement of alveolar gas exchange, while offering better and more cost effective ventilation images."

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About Polarean (www.polarean.com)

The Company and its wholly owned subsidiary, Polarean, Inc. (together the "Group") are revenue generating, medical drug-device combination companies operating in the high resolution medical imaging market.

The Group develops equipment that enables existing MRI systems to achieve an improved level of pulmonary function imaging and specialises in the use of hyperpolarised Xenon gas (129Xe) as an imaging agent to visualise ventilation and gas exchange regionally in the smallest airways of the lungs, the tissue barrier between the lung and the bloodstream and in the pulmonary vasculature. Xenon gas exhibits solubility and signal properties that enable it to be imaged within other tissues and organs.

The Group operates in an area of significant unmet medical need and the Group's technology provides a novel diagnostic approach, offering a non-invasive and radiation-free functional imaging platform which is more accurate and less harmful to the patient than current methods. The annual burden of pulmonary disease in the US is estimated to be over US$150 billion.

The Group also develops and manufactures high performance MRI radiofrequency (RF) coils which are a required component for imaging 129Xe in the MRI system. The development of these coils by the Group facilitates the adoption of the Xenon technology by providing application-specific RF coils which optimise the imaging of 129Xe in MRI equipment for use as a medical diagnostic as well as a method of monitoring the efficacy of therapeutic intervention.