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, announces that further to the announcement of 5 June 2019, the Company has delivered and installed its latest 9820 Xenon Polariser system at the Hospital for Sick Children (“SickKids”) in Toronto www.sickkids.ca.  

SickKids is a major paediatric research and teaching hospital and already has an earlier model Polarean polariser (which was recently upgraded). This new unit will expand SickKids’ ongoing paediatric research programme using hyperpolarised gas imaging. Their order was enabled by a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation (“CFI”) www.innovation.ca/about. Following this installation, the total number of the Company’s polarisers that are either installed or on order is 24.

Giles Santyr, PhD, FCCPM, Senior Scientist, Translational Medicine at The Hospital for Sick Children (“SickKids”) said: “The purchase of this second polariser will significantly improve our capabilities to image children faster and with higher image quality, enabling several new paediatric lung MRI projects.  We acknowledge the generous support of the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Research Institute of the Hospital for Sick Children, for helping make this new equipment possible.”

Richard Hullihen, CEO of Polarean, said: "We have now delivered and installed our latest polariser, which is a significant set up in capabilities for the researchers at SickKids. We look forward to enabling their new discoveries in these critical projects.”

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) 596/2014.

Enquiries:

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.