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 15 February 2019, the Company has delivered and installed its latest research unit order for a 9820 Xenon Polariser system from the University of British Columbia (“UBC”) https://www.ubc.ca/.

The UBC polariser is initially being installed at BC Children’s Hospital (http://www.bcchildrens.ca/) while construction proceeds on its ultimate site at UBC. BC Children’s is a major paediatric research and teaching hospital. This new unit will support their paediatric pulmonary disease 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 delivery of this order, the total number of the Company’s polarisers that are either installed or on order is 25.

Richard Hullihen, CEO of Polarean, said: "We have now delivered and installed our latest polariser, which is a platform for the researchers at BC Children’s Hospital, expanding our paediatric research cluster which includes Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Toronto SickKids Hospital. We look forward to enabling their new discoveries in these critical projects and we welcome UBC to the group.”

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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.