On the other hand, chemotherapy relies on the patient's blood to deliver chemicals to the tumor, a difficult task if the tumor's blood system is messed up.

Finding a way to solve these two problems has been the focus of BSD Medical for some time.

The solution, according to Mead, is conceptually quite simple.

Turns out the body's network of blood vessels serves as the body's cooling (and heating) system.

Hence (in a very simplistic explanation) when you get a sunburn, your skin turns red because the body is pumping more blood to the skin in an effort to cool off (and heal) the burned area.

BSD's scientists realized that if they could find a way to selectively raise the temperature of targeted tissues on or inside the body, the body would push blood into the area at a greater rate, providing more oxygen for radiation treatments and greater delivery capacity for chemotherapies to work.

So that's what they did.

Using very sophisticated microwave generators from BSD and sensitive imaging systems, medical professionals can now deliver beams of energy directly at tumors deep within the body or on the skin to give those tumors the equivalent of a fever.

The term for this is hyperthermia.

During the procedure, the tightly controlled energy beams raise the tumor temperature to around 105 degrees Fahrenheit. This is not high enough to cause serious harm to the body or the surrounding non-cancerous tissues, but just enough to cause the body to flood the area with blood in an attempt to cool off the feverish region.

The results in study after study are amazing as survival and life expectancy rates among cancer patients have as much as doubled.

And we're not talking hocus-pocus, funky medicine here either.

Rather a plethora of peer-reviewed journal articles have been published on the successful use of BSD's technologies in such respected publications as Cancer and THE LANCET, while similar papers have been presented at events such as the "American Society of Therapeutic Radiology and Oncology" and the "International Congress of Hyperthermic Oncology."

The company completed a $2 million PIPE offering last fall (private investment in a public equity), giving it additional capital to begin the process of marketing and selling its systems throughout the U.S. — systems that sell for between $150,000 to $1 million each.

"Our defined focus is cancer," Mead said. "We know that half the people that get cancer die from it. Our business has a serious cause behind it, and that's why we're working to help people who have cancer right now."

Sounds like a good cause, and a good business, to me.

---

David Politis leads Politis Communications, a public relations, investor relations and marketing communications agency specializing in the high-tech and life science markets.

E-mail: dpolitis@politis.com.