Lucida Medical appoints Dr David Tuch as Chair to spearhead investment and growth
Cambridge, UK: Lucida Medical Ltd, the technology leader in AI to support magnetic resonance imaging of cancer, has appointed Dr David Tuch, an experienced life science entrepreneur, investor and executive, as Non-Executive Chair of the Board. David joins to help the company build on tremendous progress during 2021, including a key milestone CE mark for its Pi software, and a successful collaboration and technology demonstration with a major vendor and radiology network. David will work with the Lucida Medical team to help secure further investment and enable the company to scale up to put its technology into the hands of clinicians.
David will work alongside CEO Dr Antony Rix, CTO Mark Hinton, Chief Medical Officer Prof Evis Sala, and existing investors including XTX Ventures.
David received his PhD from MIT and Harvard Medical School working in MRI, inventing and patenting a pioneering method for diffusion-weighted imaging now used worldwide. After serving as Global Head of Imaging at Novartis and then as Head of Research Alliances at GE Healthcare, David founded Lightpoint Medical to develop a novel miniaturised gamma ray sensor for surgery for prostate cancer and other conditions. He successfully grew Lightpoint Medical as CEO where he now serves as Executive Chair.
CEO and Co-Founder, Dr Antony Rix said: “David’s long history of leadership both in building startups and in cancer imaging further strengthen the team at Lucida Medical. We are greatly looking forward to working with David to scale up the development and commercialisation of our Pi technology, growing the company.”
Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer Prof Evis Sala, Professor of Oncological Imaging at the University of Cambridge, added: “David joins at an excellent time. Following our successful collaboration with EMRAD and GE, and CE marking, we are now ready to build Lucida Medical further to help hospitals and radiology and urology partners to bring Pi into clinical use. After the challenges of the last two years, hospitals have a serious backlog in cancer screening and need to use technology like Pi to speed the process and offer patients better care.”
Dr David Tuch said: “I am honored and excited to be joining Lucida Medical as Non-Executive Chairman. Lucida’s ground-breaking Pi cancer imaging and machine learning technology has the potential to address the pressing, global medical need for earlier prostate cancer detection. I am looking forward to working with the executive team and investors to deliver on the promise of Lucida’s remarkable technology.”
Alexandre Perrin, Head of Ventures at XTX Ventures, said: “We are delighted that David Tuch has joined Lucida Medical. His impressive track record complements the existing team well and sets the company up to continue its growth over the coming years.”
Background – Lucida Medical
Lucida Medical was founded by Prof Evis Sala and Dr Antony Rix in 2019 to support the early detection of cancer using MRI. Prostate Intelligence (Pi) is the company’s first product. Pi uses a proprietary software platform based on artificial intelligence (AI) and image processing to identify cancer in prostate MRI scans.
Pi is designed to make radiologists’ work faster and more accurate, helping cancer-free individuals avoid unnecessary investigations and procedures, and improving sensitivity to detect significant disease so that patients with cancer can get exactly the treatment they need. Pi completed CE marking in 2021 and is available in the UK and Europe. The software is not for sale in the US. In November, Lucida Medical successfully integrated Pi into the data centre of the NHS East Midlands Imaging Network (EMRAD) in partnership with GE Healthcare, through GE’s Edison Accelerator programme. The company is currently undertaking a programme of clinical research, starting with its PAIR-1 study, to test the Pi software using data from patients in a range of real-world settings and provide further clinical validation to support its adoption and deployment.
Background – Prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men in Europe, Africa and America, with 1.4 million diagnosed worldwide each year and 375,000 deaths. Earlier detection can help reduce rates of advanced and metastatic disease and in turn greatly improve patients’ experience, outcomes, and life expectancy.
MRI is now the preferred technique to assess a range of cancers, including prostate and metastatic disease. However, the current process of radiologists interpreting oncological MRI requires specialist training and is labour-intensive, creating a growing skills challenge. The shortfall in the UK radiologist workforce is forecast to reach 44% by 2025.
Prostate cancer diagnosis using MRI represents a major step forward compared to earlier methods but remains prone to human error. The ground-breaking PROMIS study (Lancet 2017; 389: 815–22) indicated that radiologists can miss 12% of significant cancers on MRI, and lead to 55% of individuals without significant cancer receiving a painful and costly biopsy. Research presented at ECR 2021 suggests that Pi could help cut missed cancers to 7% and unnecessary biopsies to 24%, as well as automating time-consuming steps, enabling radiologists to focus on giving patients the best diagnosis.