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Speaker 1: This is taking stock with Pim Box and Kathleen Hayes

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Speaker 1: on Bloomberg Radio, fighting cancer by revolutionizing radiation therapy. I

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Speaker 1: want to get right to our next guest. Chris Ronis

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Speaker 1: is chief executive officer at view Ray. His Meridian system

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Speaker 1: can not only image but treat cancer patients simultaneously. It

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Speaker 1: can reduce the wear and tear of much needed radiation

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Speaker 1: on the patients and by targeting individual cancer tumors much

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Speaker 1: more accurately, perhaps save lives that wouldn't be saved otherwise.

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Speaker 1: Chris Ronnis, welcome to the show. Glad to be here.

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Speaker 1: Thank you. So tell us about view Ray, tell us

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Speaker 1: about what you're doing. So view Ray is all about

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Speaker 1: taking the fight on cancer to the next level. As

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Speaker 1: you said, it's a visualizing cancer being able to target

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Speaker 1: it more accurately, and we do that by combining radiation

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Speaker 1: therapy with a real time m RI. I not the

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Speaker 1: kind of m R I the you sit in for

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Speaker 1: fifteen minutes and you get a single picture, But you

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Speaker 1: can lay down on this machine and you immediately start

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Speaker 1: getting a video. You can watch everything moving around in

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Speaker 1: the body and you can see that you're hitting the

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Speaker 1: tumor that you want to hit and maybe even as

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Speaker 1: importantly you're missing the things you want to miss, because

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Speaker 1: radiation is all about being able to get the cancer

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Speaker 1: and miss everything healthy around it. Tell us about the

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Speaker 1: efforts of the company to make money and to get

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Speaker 1: the product out into the marketplace. Yeah, so we've we're

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Speaker 1: a startup ten years old, but we graduated to public

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Speaker 1: status last year. Uplisted to the NASDAC in March, and

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Speaker 1: we are now pivoting the whole business to the next

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Speaker 1: generation product. We've got a linear accelerator version of this product.

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Speaker 1: We announced that early this year. We're gonna do our

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Speaker 1: clearances with the f D, A ce mark for Europe, etcetera.

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Speaker 1: In the second half of this year, and that product

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Speaker 1: has really got people very, very excited for for a

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Speaker 1: lot of reasons. Well, Chris, So, I'm sure investors are

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Speaker 1: your wedding around the type of what what is different?

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Speaker 1: What are you doing that's different and new compared to

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Speaker 1: what anybody else who's in this field is doing. What

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Speaker 1: makes you special? Why should I invest in this? Well

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Speaker 1: viewer really is the first time that doctors can see

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Speaker 1: what they're doing at the time they're delivering radiation. Today

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Speaker 1: radiation treatment is done blind. You do a lot of

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Speaker 1: planning beforehand, but at the time the patient is lying

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Speaker 1: on the table, it's like having a blindfold on. And

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Speaker 1: we take the blindfold off. We give the radiation oncologist

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Speaker 1: the ability to see what's going on in real time.

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Speaker 1: So here she can make some real time decisions. Now

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Speaker 1: I know you just completed a private placement, correct, we did.

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Speaker 1: We just we raised thirteen point seven five million, and

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Speaker 1: you're going to use that money for Again. That's all

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Speaker 1: about this pivot over to the LINAK business. It's the

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Speaker 1: next generation product. It's the product that the industry has

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Speaker 1: been waiting for. How much did they cost? You know,

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Speaker 1: it's like any piece of radiation therapy equipment. It's in

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Speaker 1: the millions of dollars and we're at a premium to

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Speaker 1: the rest of the market because of what we can do.

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Speaker 1: But these machines treat hundreds of patients a year, they

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Speaker 1: last for ten years. Radiation therapy still a very cost

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Speaker 1: effective way to treat cancer. Now you have an M

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Speaker 1: S E from M I T. So you started out

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Speaker 1: on the more the scientific and engineering side. The technology

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Speaker 1: here is so important. What was the discovery? What made

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Speaker 1: this possible. Is it something about not technology? What was

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Speaker 1: the key here to make this breakthrough? So it turns

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Speaker 1: out that m RI I and radiation just don't like

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Speaker 1: each other, and that sort of a colloquial way to

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Speaker 1: talk about science. But MRI machines need absolute quiet in

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Speaker 1: order to be able to listen to a little sub

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Speaker 1: atomic spins and make their images, and radiation sources tend

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Speaker 1: to be really really noisy. MRI machines need strong magnets,

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Speaker 1: that's what the M stands for in order to work,

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Speaker 1: and strong magnets distort radiation. And it's figuring out how

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Speaker 1: to solve those two problems that we have and that

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Speaker 1: no one else has. Do you have any data, any

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Speaker 1: any of you, any of your trials in the field

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Speaker 1: that you can give us an example of how successful

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Speaker 1: this has been relative to PASS treatments. Yeah, so we

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Speaker 1: have some really exciting data. Actually the first data got

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Speaker 1: published at the end of last year. We have these

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Speaker 1: big annual meetings. But let me give you an example.

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Speaker 1: One of the one of the trials that's ongoing is

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Speaker 1: a breast study. So typically post surgery doctor will go

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Speaker 1: in and remove the cancer. Is the lump ectomy post surgery,

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Speaker 1: a woman will go in for six to eight weeks

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Speaker 1: of radiation every day. With the accuracy of this system

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Speaker 1: being able to see it exactly and being able to

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Speaker 1: cone down the beam so you're only radiating the tumor bed,

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Speaker 1: not the whole breast. They're able to reduce that down

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Speaker 1: to five days. So six weeks down to five days.

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Speaker 1: And the really exciting result is that one of the

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Speaker 1: patients in that study had good to excellent cosmesis. In

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Speaker 1: other words, the breast conservation surgery was successful and the

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Speaker 1: radiation didn't do anything to detract from that. And that's

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Speaker 1: very different from other people who tried to do it

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Speaker 1: with the blindfold on, because when you do with the

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Speaker 1: blindfold on, you burn things, you blister things, you dimple things.

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Speaker 1: Hundred good to excellent cosmes is six week treatment down

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Speaker 1: to one week. What do you say to the investors,

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Speaker 1: Never mind the patients, but the investors who have been waiting,

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Speaker 1: I guess patiently for the positive and positive news. Stock

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Speaker 1: is down almost fifty so far this year, So this

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Speaker 1: is all about pivoting to the linear accelerator business. We

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Speaker 1: have over a hundred million dollars in backlog. These are

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Speaker 1: signed orders that people have given us and those will

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Speaker 1: start to roll out to the customers after this clearance period.

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Speaker 1: So we are most of the way through this transition

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Speaker 1: from the first gend to the second generation, and you know,

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Speaker 1: going forward from here, those those new products are both

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Speaker 1: as effective, if not more effective, and a lot better

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Speaker 1: for the business in terms of gross marching. Thanks very

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Speaker 1: much for joining us and explaining all this. Chris Ronnis.

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Speaker 1: He is the chief executive officer of View Ray. They're

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Speaker 1: based in Mountain View, California. This is Bloomberg