|
TWST: We'd like to begin with a brief historical sketch of Endocare and
a picture of the things you are doing at the present time.
Mr. Rodriguez: We've been a public company since about 1996. We were
spun out of a company called Medstone. Medstone was in the business of
lithotripsy, basically ablating kidney stones. So in effect, we've been
a public company from our very early history and, in our early years, we
were basically a product development company looking to find
opportunities most advantageous in terms of commercializing our core
competencies. In about 1999, we began focusing on prostate cancer as an
area for using our ablative technologies, using freezing temperatures to
destroy tissue and tumors. We've been in that business ever since,
focusing predominantly on prostate cancer, but also in the most recent
few years with cancers of the kidney and liver and lung, and also pain
treatment for metastatic bone cancer. Ever since, we've experienced
strong rates of growth, most recently about 36% growth in total
procedures in the US, and we believe that we've gotten to the point now
where, at least in the prostate and kidney areas, we are beginning to
emerge as a primary care treatment modality for those cancers. TWST: Would you explain your core ablation technology and what makes it
different from competing technologies?
Mr. Rodriguez: Cryoablation is simply using cold temperatures to destroy
tissue. Our technology uses an argon-based system with argon stored at
very high rates of pressure: about 3,000 pounds per square inch. As
argon depressurizes, it has the ability to get very, very cold, very,
very quickly, and that's helpful for the prostate because in that area
of the body, temperatures of about minus 20 Celsius to minus 40 Celsius
cause cellular destruction. In effect, as we utilize the ability for the
gas to depressurize and freeze very quickly, it destroys the tissue, but
it preserves the protein structure of the tissue. So the tissue remains
intact, but the cells in effect are killed. It's both healthy and
cancerous cells, but it has a very high efficacy rate for destroying
cancer, and the rate at which the cancer stays killed is also very high.
It differs in the sense of other ways of treating prostate cancer, in
particular, the surgical removal of the prostate. Most of the time,
surgical removal is an open procedure where the patient is being opened
at the abdomen and the physician goes in and cuts out the prostate
itself and cleans up the surrounding nerves and tissue. Another
modality that we compete with is called brachytherapy, which is just the
surgical implantation of radioactive seeds that, over time, release
radiation into the tissue, and that causes cellular destruction. There
are other methods of using radiation and other treatments involving
nuclear medicine, but we compete predominantly against brachytherapy and
radical prostatectomies.
Tickers included in this excerpt: ENDO
For more information call (212) 952 7433. The
Wall Street Transcript does not endorse any of the comments made by interviewees, and does
not make stock recommendations.
|
|
