Endomagnetics develops higher performance probe

Endomagnetics, a company developing a portfolio of products aiming to improve the standard of cancer care, has developed higher performance probe for its SentiMag instrument. Endomagnetics is a University College London (UCL) spin-out, based on research at UCL and Houston University, and is based in Silicon Fen, the tech cluster in Cambridge.

The SentiMag probe, together with the company’s Sienna tracer, can locate lymph nodes as part of cancer staging procedures, particularly in breast cancer. The system has been validated as equivalent to the standard-of-care in ten clinical studies and trials totalling more than 1,500 patients across the EU since 2012. The standard-of-care is even improved through increasing the availability and convenience as well as lowering the cost of lymph node localisation. The new probe is 18 millimetres in diameter, and provides minimal surgical invasiveness while boasting a three times higher sensitivity than the current model.

The slimmer probe’s development was led by Quentin Harmer, who has now been promoted to chief technology officer. The promotion reflects his contributions since joining the company in 2011, as he has enhanced the product pipeline and widened the IP portfolio. He was also responsible for developing Endomagnetics’s regulatory engagement with the US Food and Drug Administration.

Quentin Harmer, who led the development of the next generation probe, said: “Producing a slimmer probe came with design challenges as reducing the probe diameter reduces sensitivity, but we are really proud to have exceeded our design brief. Not only did we achieve the target dimensions, we actually improved sensitivity and surgical performance while maintaining the simplicity for which the SentiMag instrument is known.”