Prostate Cancer

The Company's principal IMRT products are marketed under the trade names PEACOCK(R) and CORVUS.

The Company's IGRT products, BAT(R), BATCAM(TM) and nTRAK(TM) provide fast and accurate targeting and localization of a treatment volume on a daily basis.

Over 500 hospitals and research sites worldwide are equipped with the Company's clinically proven PEACOCK, CORVUS (our proprietary treatment planning software), BAT, BATCAM, and ancillary treatment solutions.

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About Partners For Growth Partners for Growth, L.P.

I and II (PFG) is a leading provider of custom venture-debt solutions to late-stage technology and life science companies nationwide.

Founded in April 2004 by the former members of Hambrecht & Quist's venture lending group, PFG is organized as two private partnerships, with over $100 million under management.

PFG works closely with Silicon Valley Bank, the primary operating subsidiary of SVB Financial Group, whereby PFG can provide incremental debt solutions to many of the Bank's clients.

SVB Financial Group is PFG's largest limited partner.

Statements included in this release that are not historical facts may be considered forward-looking statem...

When the researchers gave mice with skin cancer a drug that blocked RANKL, the rodents had fewer tumours in their bones than animals that were not treated.

But the drug did not slow the spread of the cancer to other sites in the body.

Penninger and his colleagues stressed that the research was done in mice but they added that drugs that interfere with RANKL are in development which could be used test their findings and show it the same holds true for humans.

"This is an idea that can be directly tested," Penninger added.

Nearly all breast cancer tumours in women have the receptor for RANKL which Penninger said is an indirect indication that the findings are relevant to humans.

"Since there are novel inhibitors of RANKL far along in clinical development, the idea is that people who have cancer that is known to spread to bone can start taking this drug when they are diagnosed," said D Holstead Jones, of the University of Toronto and the lead author of the study.

"It would inhibit how much bone metastases they would have," he added in a statement.

Every year, an estimated one million people develop metastases to the bones, particularly women with breast cancer.

Drugs that inhibit RANKL may also help to alleviate the severe pain that metas...

The team also included researchers from the University of Western Ontario's Department of Physiology and Pharmacology.

Josef Penninger is currently the director of the IMBA in Vienna, where the project is being continued.Jones and her colleagues show that RANKL, a cytokine protein which is produced at high levels in bone marrow, acts on breast, prostate and skin cancer cells through the RANK receptor.

Over the past few years, Penninger's lab had determined that RANKL is essential in both bone breakdown and in controlling the growth of cells that form a lactating mammary gland.

Putting these two discoveries together, the team decided to study the link between breast cancer and bone metastases and the RANKL system.Jones and her colleagues studied bone metastases in a mouse model of skin melanoma, giving some animals a drug called osteoprotegerin (OPG), known to inhibit RANKL.

"The mice that were treated with OPG had fewer tumours in their bones than the mice that were not treated," says Jones, now an assistant professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.

For example, control mice showed migration of cancer cells into long bones, vertebrae, ovaries, ad...