Pinnacle Biologics Partners with CHEST

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We solve problems. We enable your team. And together we save lives.

Pinnacle Biologics specializes in creating cancer treatments in critical care medicine. While the Pinnacle Biologics team is able to invent innovative ways to combat cancer, the group needed assistance from CHEST to teach physicians how to perform Pinnacle’s multifaceted procedure.

The CHEST advantage

Pinnacle came to CHEST with a problem. The lung models available commercially for clinical training fail to provide a perfect match with human anatomy. The inability to implant replica tumors in these models hindered Pinnacle’s training efforts.

Rather than accept this, Pinnacle partnered with CHEST to create a custom model. CHEST and Pinnacle experimented with various mechanisms to simulate the lung airway tumors until discovering a way to optimally mimic tumors. This discovery allows clinicians to master the bronchoscopic technique of delivering Pinnacle’s photodynamic therapy procedure by hands-on practicing in a realistic environment.

Fighting cancer with innovate technology

Pinnacle’s technology attacks cancer with literally a laser precision. Pinnacle has developed a system that allows the specific targeting of local lung tumors with the use of a laser. The tumors are treated with a laser light at specific wavelength. Light at this wavelength activates a drug that is selectively retained in the tumor.

All of this incredible technology fails without proper training because the physician must be able to place the fiber optic device through the bronchoscope and into the proper position either into or adjacent to the tumor for the light to effectively reach its target.

Merging technology with patient care

Building the lung simulation model was only the first step. CHEST recently partnered with Pinnacle Biologics to create a customized learning environment for clinicians, ranging in specialties from interventional pulmonology to thoracic surgery specialists treating patients with lung cancer. The training developed by CHEST ensures that when the clinicians use this technique, they are fully prepared with the first patient they treat.

One of the attractive aspects of the program is that it is universal. Experts in this new treatment guide learners through the customized lung models so that clinicians receive hands-on training and understanding of this treatment to bring back to their teams, which can span multiple specialties involved in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment.

For this exercise, Pinnacle needed a central airway model that could simulate tumors as well as a facility equipped to facilitate hands-on training. The lung model development evolved through several generations to arrive at this solution, and even this pioneering model represents another place to build upon. The future is treating peripheral lung cancer, which is the most prevalent form discovered early in patients. CHEST and Pinnacle are partnering to create a model and training for this as well.

The CHEST Innovation, Simulation, and Training Center is in the business of creating the future of medicine by providing training solutions for companies and the clinicians they serve.

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