- 4DMedical is continuing its relationship with the US Veterans’ Affairs department
- The company will use its non-invasive imaging tech to investigate lung damage in former US soldiers tasked with operating burn pits
- Burn pits are what they sound like – waste dumps which are set alight during deployment
- Shares were up 3% to 68.5cps
It’s called a burn pit: where members of the US armed forces dump unwanted and contaminated materials, cover it with accelerant, and quite literally burn it.
If it isn’t obvious, the pit is what it sounds like – a quickly excavated hole in the ground.
How else are you supposed to get rid of waste while on tour, I guess.
The problem is, soldiers who are often tasked with managing these burn pits are known to incur health issues – principally, lung damage.
This condition has a specific name: Deployment Related Respiratory Disease (DRRD).
Enter ASX-listed biotech player 4DMedical (ASX:4DX).
The company on Friday confirmed its participation in research, the subject of a US government grant, with the Military Exposures Research Program (MERP).
Spearheaded by the US Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA), 4DX will be taking part in a MERP study utilising the company’s “VX Technology.”
In short, the company’s offering allows for a CT scan to be conducted on patients with lung problems without the need to inject radioisotopes dye into the body, making detection procedures cheaper, quicker, and safer.
To be even shorter: next-gen medical imaging.
“4DMedical’s XV Technology will assist Veterans, clinicians and researchers at the VA to detect lung disease associated with toxic exposure sensitively and non-invasively,” 4DMedical CEO Andreas Fouras said.
“This project … highlights the growing profile and momentum 4D has at [Veterans’ Affairs], and I look forward to sharing further updates in the coming months.”
The company will “characterise Veterans with biopsy-confirmed DRRD in order to understand disease progression and create new surrogate endpoints.”
Teaming up with 4DX in turn will be boffins at the Vanderbilt University Medical Centre (VUMC), an entity familiar with the Australian biotech player. VUMC is located in the USA’s Nashville City.
4DX shares were up 3.01% to 68.5cps.