Industry Speaks
Beyond biopsies – The revolution of liver health with FibroScan®
On the origin of FibroScan®
Before becoming a proven technology and the cornerstone of a company, FibroScan® was an idea. This idea has been growing from its root at ESPCI School in Paris, my PhD thesis paved the way for the development of transient elastography (TE), which was patented in 1999. The next stage of our story is when science and medicine met together at Institut Mutualiste Montsouris in June 2001, we started to explore the application of our technology to help improve patient care in hepatology.
Today, Echosens specializes in liver elastography. Our technology, Vibration-Controlled Transient Elastography (VCTE™), and our product, FibroScan®, enable clinicians to assess liver health non-invasively. This means they can detect liver problems without the need for painful biopsies. Our mission is to empower medical professionals to manage liver health for simpler, faster and better patient care.
On Echosens’ technology impacted patent outcomes and healthcare practioners in the field of liver disease
FibroScan® is standardized, easy to perform, and noninvasive meaning it doesn’t hurt. Thus patients benefit from quick and efficient evaluations, reducing anxiety and discomfort. Immediate results also lead to more productive consultations at the point of care, minimizing decisionmaking and treatment initiation delays.
Our approach at Echosens involves an ecosystem of devices, biomarkers, scores, and digital solutions that help healthcare providers through the patient journey, from early screening, which is critical to prevent advanced liver diseases, to diagnosis, prognosis, and even treatment monitoring.
With the prevailing scenario of liver disease, in particular, MAFLD/MASH, FibroScan® and Echosens can help in reducing the burden of detecting and managing the disease. FibroScan® benefits from a strong recognition in the liver health KOL community, with 4 800+ peerreviewed publications and recommendations in 180+ international guidelines.
On how pharma companies use FibroScan®
Echosens is an end-to-end partner for research, accelerating drug development and de-risking trial execution with reference liver non-invasive point-of-care testing solutions. FibroScan® is used in more than 90 percent of the MASHdrug clinical trials. In addition, with our expertise, we support pharma companies in optimizing the use of FibroScan® in their clinical trials, making sure that they leverage all the potential of our technology.
Similarly to what happened when drugs against viral hepatitis C were released on the market back in 2015, FibroScan® is being used in India every day to identify patients eligible for treatment with saroglitazar (Zydus) which is the first treatment against MASH ever approved. More recently, FibroScan® started to be used to identify patients to be treated with Rezdiffra (Madrigal), the first treatment against MASH approved by the FDA.
On how FibroScan is advanced compared to other technologies available in the market
Our technologies are protected by more than 25 patent families applicable all over the world. From a technology standpoint, FibroScan® features a unique liver elastography technique in which the shear wave frequency is precisely controlled (VCTE-50Hz) to ensure reproducibility and consistency of the liver stiffness measurements and results along the entire patient journey. FibroScan® is a smart tool that is very easy to use, in addition to being noninvasive; examining with FibroScan® doesn’t require any certification or skills in ultrasound imaging, and it can be operated by any healthcare professionals including nurses, as far as they are properly trained by Echosens or its representative.
On the future of this technology
As the global leader in liver health, Echosens is committed to empowering healthcare professionals concerning noninvasive solutions for the comprehensive management of liver health. We want to continue a leap forward in simplifying diagnosis and disease management – making liver assessments more accessible and seamlessly integrated into practices than ever before.
